


Careful What You Wish For

by SuedeScripture



Category: Actor RPF, Star Trek RPF
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe - Genie/Djinn, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, Djinni & Genies, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Existentialism, Fate & Destiny, Good and Evil, Interspecies Sex, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Minor Character Death, Religious Discussion, Touch-Starved, Transformation, Wishes, also i got your vanishing clothes trope right here, canon adjacent, have sex with magical beings and you too don't have to bother with which order things come off
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-05-21 15:14:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 34,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14917752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuedeScripture/pseuds/SuedeScripture
Summary: You can thank late night drives to the airport and Christina Aguilera for this one. Chris comes upon a strange bottle at a flea market, and gets more than he bargained for.





	1. Chapter 1

It was hot as hell, pushing 106°F according to the weather report, 110°F on the digital read-out on the First Bank sign. Waves of it baked off the asphalt in the parking lot, and he could smell Le Brea from a mile away, the tar pits probably bubbling and boiling like a witch’s cauldron. Air conditioners rattled and hummed for miles around. People walked here and there under hats and umbrellas, eating rapidly melting snow cones and ice cream. The turkey leg vender had closed up shop; no one wanted a steaming drumstick right now.

Chris swiped at his forehead and put on his shades, the baseball cap he’d thought was in the car woefully missing. He didn’t intend to spend too long out here anyway, walking between campers and tent-covered tables of the Melrose Trading Post Flea Market. He’d been moping around his apartment for days, testament to the latest end of his short-lived relationships, and hey, he was a red-blooded native Angeleno. A little retail therapy wouldn’t hurt. Hipster-style.

He walked the stalls, flipping through boxes of vinyl and carts of hand-dyed scarves and sarongs. He had nothing particular in mind, just something that might strike the right chord with his maudlin feelings.

He came across a set-up of vases and other glass tchotchkes. At the corner of the table was a cardboard box containing maybe twenty or so pieces, ranging from decanters, flasks, shakers and tumblers, maybe misplaced parts of a set or single pieces themselves. Most looked antique and most were probably junk, but there was always the possibility of buried treasure. That was the whole point of walking the flea market, after all.

He blamed his mother and grandmother, really. Grammie had rubbed elbows with some of Hollywood’s major players back in her day: Bogart, Lugosi, maybe even Sinatra. She’d had lot of the old Deco aesthetic in her little cottage, much of which his mom and uncle had split between them when she’d passed away a few years ago. He had always liked the strong lines and industrial geometric shapes of the era. It was in his blood, growing up here in Hollywood’s shadow. He’d never expected to want to follow in their footsteps until he found out how much he loved the spotlight.

He started to pick through the box, seeking out the glass colors he liked the best. The old woman at the booth leaned forward in her folding chair, watching him in anticipation. He put one bottle aside and reached for another.

“You buy whole box, ten dollar.”

“Really?” Chris pushed up his shades and brought out the puppy eyes, which tended to do a lot for him in the old lady department, “I can’t just pick and choose? I’d pay you more than ten dollars. I’d pay you… five dollars for each one I pick out.”

“No no no,” The old woman was steadfast, both hands to the box as if pushing it away, but unwilling to touch it herself, “Whole box.”

Chris made a point of looking like it was a steep offer, but man, he really wanted that Deco-ware. “Tell you what, I’ll give you twenty. Whole box.”

The old woman gave him a toothy grin and happily took his money. He collected his box and strode off, figuring he’d just pick out the junk glass later. He had to wonder why she was so eager to get rid of it all so cheaply, it didn’t seem of any lesser quality than the rest of the stuff she was selling, some had to be worth a little bit. They might be lead crystal and incomplete sets, but it’s not like he’d be using them to impress anyone or decant anything. He just liked the mystique.

In the parking lot, he set the box over on his passenger’s seat and scooted in after it, sticking the key in the ignition and cranked the air up with a grin.

Back at home, he pulled his elderly BMW under the carport, tucked the box under one arm and jogged up the stairs, glass tinkling. Juggling to get his apartment door unlocked, he set it into his armchair and went to grab a water from the fridge. He guzzled the whole bottle as he listened to his answering machine: ex-girlfriend wanting back a plant he’d stopped watering and trashed probably a week back, mom wanting him to call and talk about said ex, agent going on about some shitty TV guest spots his dad would tell him to take, but he didn’t want now that he had a few leads under his belt, albeit in crummy rom-coms. Now he was waiting for something really special to come along.

In the living room, he picked out one of the bottles from the top of the box, tilting it in the sunlight from the window and gauging that old-fashioned sparkle. It was a simple, small decanter of sorts, maybe more like a large perfume bottle, and it didn’t match any of the other stuff. The glass itself was heavy, possibly genuine crystal with kind of a smoky purplish tinge, and the stopper was missing. He rubbed his thumb through the caked dust. Twenty bucks, he thought with an amused headshake. With a little cleaning up, some of this stuff would look great on a bar. If he had a bar. Maybe one day when he made it big, he’d buy one of those 1940’s homes up the hill, one with a snazzy built-in bar, and this shit would fit right in. A guy can dream, right?

“Hi.”

“HOLY SHIT!” Chris screamed, leaping around in his skin and darting across the room, because there was a nearly naked dude lounging across his sofa like Cleopatra.

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” said the guy, examining his nails with nonchalance.

“Who the fuck are you?” shrieked Chris, “Why are you in my house?” 

He searched wildly around for a weapon, cursing that his old baseball gear was in a closet somewhere. He hefted the bottle in his hand, poised to throw it at the intruder.

“Whoa, okay,” the guy sat up, swinging long hairy legs down and raising his hands, palms out and eyes wide at the bottle, “Could you please not throw that?”

“Why the fuck not, man!?”

“Uh, because it would break? And hurt me? A lot?”

“Yeah, that would be the point!” He drew his hand back and got a sick thrill at the way the guy flinched.

“Okay, please don’t. Please, just put it down and we’ll talk like civilized people, okay?” the guy entreated, standing with both hands placating. “I won’t hurt you.”

“The hell you won’t.”

“I won’t. I promise. Please put it down?” he asked again.

Chris hesitated, trying to get a grip on the situation. The guy was wearing some weird-ass shimmery material as a loincloth, thick, gaudy gold chains around his wrists, and nothing else. Must have come from a costume party or whatever. It was fucking July, nowhere near Halloween, but this was LA, some people didn’t need much of an excuse.

“I don’t have any money,” he insisted, “Or valuables.” Kind of a lie, he wasn’t exactly waiting tables for a living anymore. But he wasn’t a particularly materialistic guy either, last century impulse-buy glassware aside. He was saving up, okay? For the house on the hill.

“That’s fine,” Loincloth nodded. “Actually, that bottle you have there is pretty valuable, so… so if you could just not break it, that would be really great.”

“You want it?” Chris said, holding it out immediately. “Take it!”

“No no, I don’t want it,” the guy flapped his hands at it hastily, “Just put it down. Gently. Please.”

Eyes never leaving him, Chris took a wary step forward to set the bottle down on the coffee table between them. The guy let out a long exhale, dropping his hands and then draping himself across Chris’ sofa again. “Thank you.”

“Kay, no,” Chris huffed, gesturing at him, “That wasn’t an open invitation to get comfy and make yourself at home.”

The guy shrugged, “No, but I figure I might as well.”

“Did you get drunk and break into the wrong apartment or something?” Chris asked, because it was a likely explanation. His buddy Patrick had done that one time, they’d laughed about it for ages.

“What? No,” said the guy.

“Then what are you doing here?”

“You brought me here, you tell me.”

“I didn’t bring you anywhere. Get out of my house!” Chris was getting seriously heebied out. Dude was sassy now that he wasn’t being threatened with lead crystal to the face.

Loincloth raised a finger, “Um, you did, and technically I can’t leave, so…”

“Okay, I’m calling the fucking cops,” Chris grabbed for his phone and brandished it.

“No, don’t do that, it just complicates things,” the guy stood up again, but Chris furiously dialed, grabbing the bottle again and darting to put the chair between them in case the guy made a move. Loincloth just threw his hands in the air, “Oh my god, I hate the 20th century. Fine. Call the cops.” And he collapsed back on the couch with a disdainful huff.

“Twenty-first,” Chris corrected. “Twenty-first century.”

“Is it? Huh.”

Chris walked back around to see the guy’s face, leveling his most thunderous glare at him as he waited for a connection. Hopefully the imminent threat of arrest would work before the weirdo tried anything. “Hello? Yeah, there’s a dude in a loincloth in my house! No, I don’t know him, he’s just here and naked and I want him out! I’m staring right at him and he won’t leave! What? Of course I asked him to! No, I don’t think he’s armed, but maybe he’s happy to see me? Citizen’s arrest or whatever, can you just send someone, please?”

The lady on the line said she would, and then told him because it wasn’t a priority call, to hang up and call back if he felt in any danger. Right, because that would be easy. If this creeper decided to strangle him, he’d just ask him to hang on a sec while he called back.

“So this is your place?” the guy said after several minutes in a stare-down, which Chris lost. Dude was all intense eyebrows and shit.

He crossed his arms defensively, “What about it?”

“Nothing,” Loincloth smiled, lounging back even farther, hairy legs propped wide. “Nicer than mine.”

“I get it,” said Chris, “You don’t have air conditioning, right? You figured you’d just take advantage of someone else’s?” That had been a major perk of this place, actually, it had central air.

“Not really,” the guy replied. “I don’t mind the heat.”

Chris picked up the bottle again, studying it, “So this is valuable?”

The guy eyed it disdainfully, “To some, I suppose.”

“To you?” asked Chris. “What if I do break it?”

“I’d really rather you didn’t,” the guy answered, “It’s complicated.”

Chris was about to push for some explanation, but was interrupted by a knock.

“Finally!” He set the bottle aside on a bookshelf, pulling the door open to two LAPD beat cops dressed in their shorts, which was always a little hard to take seriously. Chris had practically grown up around LA Vice, it just reminded him of ‘Uncle’ Erik. “He’s right there,” he pointed to the sofa. “Nice costume, right?”

The cops both looked around the apartment, then at each other, then back at him. “Sir?”

“On the couch,” Chris pointed again. “I don’t know this guy. I came home and he was in my apartment like he owns the place.”

Both officers looked at the sofa, frowning. Loincloth raised his heavy eyebrows, waving at the pair of them, “What a pleasure, officers. Welcome to the party. Soon we might have enough to do the Village People.”

The cops looked back at Chris. “Sir, are you feeling okay?”

“What do you…” Chris blinked, confused, “I’m fine, I just want this dude gone!”

The younger cop started walking the small apartment, one hand on his holster, checking the kitchen, peering into the bedroom and bathroom down the short hall, shaking his head at his partner as he returned.

“Son, now I don’t want to alarm you,” the older officer tentatively said to Chris, gesturing to the sofa, “but I don’t see anyone there.”

“What are you talking about?” Chris stared at him and then at Loincloth, who crossed his arms over his hairy chest with a jingle of chains and stared brazenly right back. “I’m looking right at you, right? Talking to you?”

“Yup,” he answered definitively, “You are talking to me. But whether or not Ponch and Jon believe you is up in the air.”

Utterly flummoxed at the reference, Chris just stared back at him.

The younger officer shook his head silently to his older counterpart, then turned to Chris, “Sir, have you been drinking?”

“What? No.”

“Have you been using any controlled substances?”

“Of course not!” he sputtered. 

“I did some EMT training,” the younger officer offered, “You mind if I take a closer look at you?”

“Whatever,” Chris muttered, watching Loincloth smirk as he moved the box to the coffee table and sat in his armchair.

The cop squatted in front of him, shining a penlight in his eyes and taking his pulse, “Do you have any medical conditions? Any regular meds you might have missed or taken too much of?” 

“No,” he replied, “I mean, I get kind of hypoglycemic sometimes.”

“Have you eaten today?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I had coffee this morning. Leftover slice of pizza.” He couldn’t have guessed exactly how old said pizza might have been, but no, naked dude was still right there in front of him, watching in apparent amusement. It couldn’t be a delusional mirage.

“Son,” the older cop moved around the coffee table, tugging up the thighs of his shorts. As he sat down to demonstrate the couch was—to his knowledge, anyway—vacant, Loincloth yanked his long legs out of the way, rolling his eyes in affront of nearly being sat on. “There’s no one in here but us three.”

“Are you sure you didn’t take anything else?” the second asked. “Maybe club candy last night, might still be wearing off? You won’t be in trouble for admitting use.”

“No! I don’t do that stuff, I didn’t go out last night. I haven’t even had a beer since yesterday afternoon,” Chris insisted. When they exchanged a glance of disbelief, he elaborated, “I woke up this morning about ten, had coffee, watched The Price Is Right. Then I went to the flea market, walked around for maybe a couple hours,” he threw a hand at the box of glassware, “I bought this box of shit and came back home!”

The older cop poked through the box, pulling the stopper on one decanter and sniffing it.

“Sunstroke, maybe? It’s blazing out there, and you look pretty scorched. You really should have put on sunscreen on a day like today,” the younger cop said, standing again. “I think you should drink lots of water, throw out that pizza and get something fresh and healthy. Maybe stay in and take it easy tonight, okay?”

Chris blinked up at both of them, and then at the dude on his couch again, frowning with confusion and now a little fear.

“Do you still see someone here besides us, son?” the older cop asked, and this time it had the implication of calling for the happy wagon to a psych ward. His mom would have a cow.

“I don’t know,” he lied, deliberately looking elsewhere, at the bottle he’d set on the bookshelf, away from the rest. He rubbed his fingers and thumb into his eyes, because hey, he was an actor, dammit. “I… I guess not, not anymore. I… I guess I don’t know what I was seeing. Maybe it is sunstroke. ”

“Do you want us to call someone for you?” asked the young cop sympathetically, “Maybe you’d feel better if someone you know looked in on you?”

“No, I think… I think I’ll be okay if I just get some rest. I’ve, uh… I’ve been working overtime lately, and I just went through a pretty bad break up and…” he lied again, feeling a blush rise to his already hot face.

“Alrighty,” the old cop stood, pulling a card out of his breast pocket, “You call us back if you need any help, okay? That number goes to my department voicemail. We can put you in touch with someone.” He patted Chris’ shoulder paternally as he walked them out, apologizing for wasting their time and thanking them, then shut the door.

And looked right back at the sofa. Dude was still there, plain as fucking day.

“A bad break up?” Loincloth drawled, “‘I’m hallucinating because I feel lonely and unloved’. Really?”

“You were right in front of them. Why couldn’t they see you?” Chris asked, rubbing at his eyes and peering at him again, “Am I going crazy?”

The guy merely looked at him with an air of sass. “I don’t know, are you? I can never tell these days.”

Chris ignored that, a little freaked out. He rubbed at the itchy dried sweat on his arms, finally feeling the sting of the sunburn. “What do you want from me?”

“I don’t want anything from you,” the guy rolled his eyes, “The question is, what do you want from me?”

“Nothing. I want you to leave.”

“Well,” the guy pressed his fingertips to his lips, “That puts us at an unfortunate impasse.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“I’m here to serve you.” The guy lounged back again, fixing him with a dark stare. “You’re my Master.” 

“What the fuck, dude,” Chris blurted, pacing the room again. “First of all, _no_. Even if I knew you from a bag of corn chips, you’d have to buy me a drink first. Second, I don’t want to be anybody’s ‘Master’.” He made finger quotes for emphasis. “That particular kink is not really my scene.”

“And yet, you are my Master, regardless,” the dude said. “As far as I can tell, your singular desire is for me to leave, which is the one thing I can’t do until you release me.”

“I release you, then,” Chris waved his hand like he was deterring an annoying fly, “Go away.”

The guy hooked a finger into the chain around his wrist and tugged, “Sadly, it doesn’t work that way.”

Chris sat back down in the chair, narrowing his eyes. Either this guy was a figment of his sun-baked imagination, or he was aware of something Chris wasn’t. He decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. “Okay. Explain. I’m listening.”

The guy gave a long suffering sigh. “In the beginning, there were made three beings under God, depending on which version you subscribe to. Humans, made of Clay; Angels, made of Light; and Djinn, made of Fire.”

“I’m not religious.”

“Yeah, well, on your science side, then, my kind usually exist on another plane. Quantum physics, inter-dimensionality. I am Djinn. You can see me because you currently possess the vessel Between.”

“Still not making any sense,” said Chris. “All I know is that you showed up in my house and I’m the only one who can see you? Are you even real?”

“Since when does visibility have anything to do with being real?” the guy scoffed, “Can you see air?”

“No, I mean like…” Chris waved his hand, then looked at it and back at him. “Corporeal. Can I touch you?”

The guy sighed, extending his own hand. Chris leaned forward to shake it. “I’m Chris, by the way.”

“Zekharyah.”

“That’s a mouthful. Zak-hah— Zach—”

“Zach is fine.”

“Zach,” Chris repeated, letting go of his hand and then looking at his own palm, “You’re really hot. Not like _hot_ , but like… _hot_. Is that normal?”

“Yes,” Zach raised a dark eyebrow. “I like I said, made of fire.”

“Okay,” Chris smiled skeptically. “Humans aren’t made of clay, though.”

“Oh, you’re not?” Zach queried in the same sardonic tone, “Okay, Science Guy. You’re made of carbon, various minerals, proteins and water. Clay.”

“And you’re made of the chemical process of combustion?” Chris smirked. “So why isn’t my house burning down around you?”

“Because I have some self-control, genius.”

“Right.”

Zach rolled his eyes and lifted his hand again, palm up, and it burst into flame, right before his eyes. 

“Whoa!” Chris jumped back, transfixed. Zach closed his fist, and the flame expired as abruptly as it began. He idly shook the bluish ash from his palm, the skin unburned. Chris grinned boyishly, “Hey, that’s so cool! Are you a magician or something?”

“In a manner of speaking. I have certain abilities.”

“This is like some X-men thing, right?” Chris wondered, “Like, are you a super-evolved human?”

“No. I’m not human. My kind came before you, you inherited this plane from us,” he replied haughtily. “Like I said, I’m a Djinn.”

“A what now?”

“A Djinn.”

“A jean?” Chris said, “Speaking of which, could you put some pants on? ‘Cause this whole situation is—” The guy was lounging again, knees spread open, junk all but on display under sheer shimmery cloth. Chris had spent the last hour trying to avert his eyes, but geez. “I probably have some sweat pants you can borrow.”

Zach rolled his eyes again with a dramatic sigh. “Okay, you’re obviously one of the ones that I’m not getting through to. Please don’t pee, okay? I can’t deal with the stench of human waste.”

He stood, raising his arms up from his sides, and his feet left the floor, floating a few inches above it and drifting closer.

Chris grinned stupidly up at him. “Dude, I saw that Criss Angel guy do that on the Strip in Vegas this one time. Neat trick.”

“It isn’t a trick, and I’m no Angel.” The guy’s voice did something weird, becoming deeper, louder, a more sinister growl Chris felt almost to his bones. The room darkened, the light all but sucked from it as he loomed closer, grew bigger, eyes blackening like burning coals to orange, blue, fiery white. His skin blistered, hair singing off up his arms, legs and chest as the blue-black char encompassed his whole body, a oily smoke swirling around. The doofy grin on Chris’ face stretched to one of horror, and he pulled up his knees and clutched his head in some attempt to protect himself from the thing nearly on top of him.

“I AM DJINN,” it roared, rattling Chris’ teeth in his skull. “YOU HAVE RELEASED ME. I AM YOURS TO COMMAND, MASTER.”

It shrank back down to the floor, brushing away the remaining blue ash from its skin, and once again appeared as a normal human being.

“So, there’s that,” the guy pushed his dark hair back and flopped gracefully down on the couch.

Chris gave a bleat of terror and fled the room.

 

 

Okay. 

So the thing in Chris’ house obviously wasn’t human, it wasn’t normal, it wasn’t anything he’d ever believed could exist in real life. But it couldn’t be imaginary either, not so far as he could tell, and he was really reasonably sure his psychologist family members would have informed him if he was prone to psychotic episodes. Chris liked to think he was an intelligent, rational person. He liked facts. 

But he liked fiction too. He was a lit nerd and an actor; fiction was kind of his thing.

Once he got over himself, he peered back out from his bedroom to see the thing still out there, lounging on his couch flipping tv channels. He was now wearing cut off jeans and a sleeveless tee, looking for all the world like one of Chris’ buddies. Not so intimidating without the fire and the floating. So he tried to reclaim his balls and hovered in the entry to the living room, keeping a wary eye on the intruder. 

“Hey, why isn’t Golden Girls on?” the guy asked him distractedly.

“What?”

“Golden Girls? You know, ‘Thank you for being a friend’?”

Chris frowned, “You’re kidding, right?”

“Isn’t it on this channel? Why do you have like 900 channels on this thing?”

“Dude, that show ended when I was about twelve years old.”

The guy’s eyes swung back to him with shock, “What? Why?”

Chris threw out a gesture of obviousness, “I dunno, man, because old ladies get tired and die eventually?”

The guy slumped down in the cushions, looking terribly sad. “Oh. Right.”

Chris ventured farther into the room, picking up the bottle and sitting in his armchair, studying the old crystal.

“So, you’re like a genie?” he asked, completely suspending disbelief now. “You came out of this bottle?”

“I’m not _like_ anything. I’m a Djinn.”

“That’s what I said. A genie.”

Zach gave a put-upon sigh. “Does the word matter?”

“Actually, yeah,” Chris jabbed a thumb at himself, “Lit major. I like words.”

“Fine. I am a Djinn. Tayaliq, peri, marid, daemon, fate, ifrit, dís, seraph, genie. These are all words your kind have for what I am. I’m a being not of your dimension, put into that bottle,” he sneered at it, “to do the bidding of its current bearer.”

Chris looked at the bottle, a slow smile curling on his face. “You’re a genie, and you’re here to grant me wishes.”

Zach clenched his jaw. “Yes.”

“Is Santa Claus real too?”

The guy eyeballed him, “Do parents lie to their kids for years about a fat man who breaks into the house to bring presents if they behave, when all they do is go buy the little brats whatever will make them happy regardless of their shitty behavior? Sure, Santa’s as real as a lie can be.”

“So you’re not from this plane, or dimension, or whatever? Like, there are other worlds out there?”

“Yes, puny conceited human,” said Zach sarcastically, “There are other realms. Millions of them. You really aren’t the special snowflakes you think you are.”

“And yet, you’re the one living in a bottle in this one,” Chris demonstrated he wasn’t the dullest crayon in the box. “Why aren’t you in your own, then? If you hate this shitty dimension so much, why are you here?”

The Djinn looked sulkily away, heavy lashes dropping to the remote control in his hand, “I committed a crime.”

“So you’re a prisoner,” Chris remembered the old Disney cartoon he’d loved as a kid. Funny that he’d never thought about why the affable blue genie was imprisoned in the first place. “And this is your punishment? What crime?”

“None of your business.”

“It is my business, I’m your Master. You have to do everything I say.”

“Actually I don’t have to do anything you say, unless you specifically _wish_ it,” Zach retorted. “And furthermore, if I were to tell you the nature of my crime, you could coerce me into committing it again. I’m a creature of Free Will, just like you.”

“That’s weird.”

“Yes, well, life is weird.”

“But like, I thought Angels and Demons existed to influence humanity one way or another. For good or evil, or whatever.”

“Number one: I’m not an Angel, and I’m not a Demon. I am Djinn. My purpose is to do with my Masters’ desires, which might be good or evil, both or neither, depending on your ideas of morality. Two: anyone can influence anyone else, whether or not they act based on that influence is their own doing and may they suffer the consequences. That’s Free Will.”

That was confusing to parse out, so Chris redirected. “So what are you here for?” he asked, “I mean, why me?”

“How did you acquire my bottle?”

“I bought it at a flea market this morning,” Chris gave a little laugh, looking at the cardboard box still sitting on the floor, “This old lady made me buy that whole box of glassware, even though I really only wanted a few pieces.”

“Including mine?”

Chris looked at the bottle again. “I mean, I guess maybe I picked it up at one point, sure.”

“And rubbed it?”

“It was dusty.”

Zach humphed. “Old woman. Argentinean?”

“Maybe? I dunno.”

The Djinn snorted, “She was a real peach.”

“She seemed pretty eager to get rid of this.”

“I may have had a little fun with her,” shrugged Zach, “She overreacted.”

“Like you did with me earlier?”

“Oh my god, she was so melodramatic,” he scoffed, “Her neighbors were either going to carry her out of there in a straightjacket or a box. They tried to exorcise me away. Literally all she had to do was put me back in the bottle and get the fuck over herself. Took years to coax her to do it. Years of her curses and rosaries and hissy fits. Obviously she threw me in your box of junk and left me there for a decade or so.”

The guy didn’t look any older than Chris. “So, are you immortal? How old are you?”

“Does it matter?”

“It’s just a question,” he replied, “Of scope, I guess. I’m a puny human, blow my mind. Five hundred years… five thousand?”

“I don’t even know anymore,” the Djinn sighed. “More than ten thousand, probably. Can’t see much from inside a bottle, you know.”

Chris tried to take that in, trying to think of all the fantasy literature he’d read and how little it helped him here. In fact, the only thing that did resonate was that old cartoon.

“So, is it like in _Aladdin_? Are there rules?” Chris waved a hand, “What were they… you can’t kill anyone, you can’t make people fall in love… you can’t wish for more wishes. I get three, right?”

Zach smiled like an unenthused parent. “It’s more complicated than that.”

“Okay, terms, then,” he sat back, readying himself, “Give it to me.”

“First,” Zach began, “I can only appear to and do the bidding of the bearer of that bottle.”

Chris held up the bottle to the light. “So if anyone else touches it…?”

“If they touch it with desire in their heart, your claim is forfeit, and I will belong to the new bearer,” Zach glanced back at the bottle, “So if you value your claim, you should keep it close. You’d be surprised how many times a former Master’s housekeeper suddenly becomes filthy rich. Also, I can’t leave the vicinity of the bottle, nor can I touch it myself, I must come out and return to it as you bid me, no one else but you can see me, yada yada,” he gave a sulky huff, “But seriously, I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t make me stay inside all the time.”

“‘Phenomenal cosmic power, itty bitty living space?’” Chris quoted with a big grin complete with Robin William’s impression.

Zach just looked confused, “What?”

“Never mind,” Chris cleared his throat. “Okay, what next?”

“Like I said, I can’t affect the Free Will of anyone,” said Zach, “Meaning, I can’t force you or anyone else to fall in love, to kill someone, or otherwise make a decision they don’t come to of their own accord.”

“So how do you grant wishes, then?”

“I influence events as they play out, alter perceptions, make certain things seem more desirable or more revolting than they are in reality. I can also make and change material things. Money, possessions, appearance.”

“How?”

Zach gave an eyeroll, “I’m a magician. I do magic.”

“Magic isn’t real,” he tried, “It’s just slight of hand or… chemistry.”

“Mmm,” the genie said, “I wonder which one your kind is leaning towards these days. It always goes in cycles, science or magic, reality or fiction.”

“Yeah, but,” Chris said, “You set yourself on fire, that was real, I could feel it.”

“Humans are incredibly easy to manipulate. You saw flame, therefore you believed you felt a heat intense enough to burn. Your kind jump to conclusions so easily, and without forethought. It makes you gullible,” he grinned sharply, prowling to the nearer end of the sofa, reaching out toward Chris’ chin. “For instance, these scars on your face. How did you acquire them?”

Chris frowned and reddened, embarrassed, “It’s… I had bad acne as a kid. You aren’t supposed to pick at it, but—”

Suddenly the genie pounced, shushing his recoil as he crouched over Chris in the armchair. His hot hands cupped Chris’ cheeks, thumbs stroking over the pitted spots, fingertips brushing parts of his face almost tenderly: his eyebrow, his jaw, his ear. “I said that I influence human desire, Christopher. I can bring your potential to the attention of others, influence their desire, to your benefit. Whether you use it for good or evil is your call.”

Chris swallowed, as startled by the creature straddling over him as he was by the gentleness of his touch, the glitter of his eyes. They weren’t black as he’d previously thought, but more of a warm coffee brown. Once the genie withdrew, he handed Chris a mirror, one that evoked a vague memory of his grandma’s dressing table and all the baubles and potions on its surface, something he surely didn’t own. But in the reflection, his face looked…

He looked kind of amazing. It was him, but another version: different, altered, photoshopped. His skin was smooth and clean, jawline strong, with stubble that wasn’t patchy, no angry redness speckling his chin. The scars were there, but somehow diminished, blurred. Even the mole by his ear was less noticeable. But it was all still his own face, fully recognizable.

“Huh,” he touched his face, in awe that he could look this good. “Wait, does this use up one of my wishes?”

“No. It’s a glamour,” Zach said, then elaborated at Chris’ blank look. “An illusion. Humans, I have found, respond best to nearly flawless beauty. Like the form I take for you now. Nearly flawless, you understand. Humanity idolizes the idea of perfection, but when confronted with its truth, it usually freaks you out.”

“I guess,” Chris muttered, studying this new look on his face. “Not always, though. So how come you didn’t come to me looking like Barbara Eden?” he hitched up one corner of his mouth.

“I prefer to take a form that is a reflection of my Master’s unconscious desires in human skin.”

“And this is my unconscious desire?” Chris waved a hand at Zach skeptically. “A hairy sassmaster in a loincloth?”

Zach smirked, “You might be surprised what I can dig out of that primitive little brain of yours.”

Chris looked back at his own altered face in the mirror, frowning.

“Can you put it back?” he asked, touching the place where the biggest scar used to be, now blurred under stubble.

“Do you want me to?”

Chris looked at his reflection again. No. He didn’t want to be that guy, didn’t want to succeed just because of his looks, or rely on his looks to succeed. He had talent, dammit, and intelligence. And he’d done it all on his own so far. “Yeah. Yeah, change it back.” 

Zach casually waved his hand, and when he looked in the mirror again, his face looked like he remembered, looked like him, zits and all.

He sat back and considered the magnitude of this, taking up the bottle from his lap. “Three wishes. Anything I want?”

“Within the established parameters, yes,” Zach sat back himself, watching him. “Anything you want.”

“This is nuts,” Chris sighed. It really was. What could he wish for? What exactly did he want out of his life? If it was just handed to him by a magical genie, did he really deserve it? It was mind-boggling.

Suddenly he was exhausted, and he did feel a little icky now that he thought about it. Maybe he really did have sunstroke. Maybe that pizza was more than a week old. Maybe he needed to take a cold shower and a nap.

He looked back at the guy, “Listen, I’m gonna need to think about this for awhile. Is that okay?”

Zach lifted both hands, “Hey, I have all the time in the world. Immortality and all.”

“Right,” Chris held out the bottle again, “So, how do I put you back in?”

The genie’s face twitched unhappily, “You tell me to go back in.”

“No magic spell or anything?” Zach leveled a withering look at him, and Chris shrugged. “So… go back in. No, wait!”

The dark look shifted to annoyance.

“How do I get you back out again?”

Zach rolled his eyes. “Rub the bottle.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Or just speak my name.”

“The real one, right?”

“Zach is fine,” he said. “You’re my Master. As long as you keep the bottle close, I can hear you.”

“Okay,” Chris shifted in his seat, holding the bottle out between them. He watched closely, not wanting to miss this, “So, go back in.”

Those dark eyes were almost betrayed if he thought about it too hard, but the thought disintegrated as quickly as the dude did, literally wafted apart before his eyes. It was bizarre to watch a solid human figure seem to fizzle apart into a hazy, curling bluish smoke, which drifted close and then sucked itself into the little crystal bottle.

And then Chris was alone. The overtaxed air conditioner hummed, the sitcom on the tv mutedly played a laugh track, the couch empty. Ordinarily, he was relieved to have his place to himself again when company left, but this felt different, like he wasn’t alone at all.

He carried the bottle with him to his bedroom, setting it on his dresser and staring at it before he pulled his shirt over his head. In the mirrored doors of the closet, he could now see the crisp line where his tank covered the pasty freckled flesh of his shoulder and the angry red that had been exposed.

He cranked on the shower to a tepid cool, sighing as he stepped in and turned it colder to take the sting of the sunburn away. By the time he collapsed in his bed, the strange feeling had gone, and he slept.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris has questions. Chris has so many questions.

A week passed before Chris dared to even look at the bottle again, to acknowledge its existence. When he’d woken up in the following days, he’d pretty much convinced himself it had all just been a really bizarre dream, brought on by the heat wave and possibly food poisoning. He’d gone to a couple of pretty bad auditions, did some voiceover for a local auto body shop commercial that a buddy had talked him into for measly pay, played basketball with the gang, and finally called his mom for the obligatory psych eval on his post-girlfriend mental state. All things considered, he felt like he’d managed to get over it. The girlfriend, and the weird loincloth genie guy dream.

Except for thinking about all the things he could possibly wish for. And the nights spent reading everything he could find about genie folktales, fairytales, religious texts and wild conspiracy theories.

Then there were the morality plays of said fairytales. Dishonesty gets you nowhere. Money and possessions won’t make you happy. With great power comes great responsibility (okay, so that one wasn’t quite a fairytale, but same concept).

Chris wasn’t a big believer in destiny. He didn’t like the idea that anything in his life was predetermined, that he didn’t have multiple choices. Even deciding that he wanted to act for a living came at the end of a list of other things he’d considered pursuing, and would still consider if it didn’t pan out. After one or two TV stints he suspected came down the pipeline because he ‘knew a guy who knew a guy’, he'd expressly forbade his dad from talking him up to industry friends—there were so many people here who got into the club simply because of rampant nepotism. He wanted to succeed because he was fucking good at something, on his own merits.

Which still didn’t explain the genie, and the wishes, and how ludicrous it all was. He’d walk by the bottle on his dresser, left there not unlike a forgotten perfume vial or something belonging to the ex that wasn’t important enough to demand back, but that he couldn’t bring himself to get rid of, either. He imagined that was also an option, like leaving a book he’d finished at the café; someone else would come along and pick it up eventually. There was Free Will even in this.

But he’d gone and seen the impossible already, and been told he could have anything his heart desired. He’d opened the proverbial Pandora’s box. This didn’t happen in real life. There had to be a catch.

It couldn't hurt to ask, right? Hell, he was half-convinced that if he rubbed the bottle now, absolutely nothing would happen, thereby proving that he had an overactive imagination and really needed to clean out his fridge more often.

He picked the bottle up and took it back out to his living room, where the box of all the rest of the glassware sat shoved under the coffee table, ignored. The whole ordeal had made him wary of doing anything with them. Which was ridiculous; how many genies in bottles could there really be in the world?

He gave the bottle a light rub with his thumb, just enough pressure to break up the caked years of dingy build-up. Instantly, the smoke arose from it, though it wasn’t thickly billowing or brightly colored or accompanied by any fireworks or magical sound effects like in the movies. It simply wafted up and out like a lazily exhaled hit off a cigarette, then gathered and condensed into the form of a man.

Once solidified, Zach flicked dark eyes toward him once before taking in the room, picking up a book Chris had left on the sofa cushion and sitting to crack it open. That answered the question of whether he could interact with objects, then. 

The rest Chris didn’t quite know how to start asking.

“You want a drink?” he offered awkwardly, “Beer, or something?”

Zach looked at him from under his brows like he was an imbecile. “I’m made of fire.”

“Right,” he remembered, “You probably… don’t really do liquids, then. Do you eat?”

“I consume, yes, just not what you might. Think about it, Chris.”

“So, if you're fire, you consume… air?”

“You were never a Boy Scout, I suppose?” Zach drawled. “Other combustibles too, but yes, air is technically sustenance enough. Thanks for letting me out, by the way.” He tipped his neck side to side, like he was working a kink out of it.

Unable to wrap his head around how some sort of elemental fire-being was currently sitting on his Ikea sofa holding a paperback without so much as a sizzle, Chris scratched at the remaining flaky skin on the back of his neck, trying to find a segue to a weird existential discussion.

“So, um.”

“So, um,” Zach parroted, reading a moment longer before raising his eyes again. “You have questions.”

“I don’t get why my desire is your purpose,” Chris launched right in, “I’ve been reading all these different philosophies on Free Will and the nature of good and evil and predetermination and all this stuff. And when I get to you, this… this powerful immortal being granting me—a lowly human nobody—whatever it is I want, I get hung up. It makes no sense.”

“Wow, you’re really taking this to heart, aren’t you?” Zach raised an eyebrow, “I had one Master who wished for a pony, a puppy and a parrot in the space of five minutes. Done, done, done, end of servitude. Which was great, you know, I didn’t really want to stick around with a seven-year-old girl longer than strictly necessary.”

“Come on, man,” Chris said, “Indulge me. What the hell is the point?”

“You firmly believe there’s a lesson to be had?”

“Yeah, I do,” Chris nodded. “There has to be.”

“You haven’t made a wish yet. So you haven’t quite grasped the implications, the reverberations of your desires. The first one is always a bit of a tip-off.”

“So you’re saying it’s a cause-and-effect thing?”

“Isn’t it?” Zach asked back, “For instance, Little Miss Veruca with her three P’s. Of course a child wants these things, but animals in captivity have needs. A pony needs a field to run in, grass to eat. A puppy and a parrot have similar basic requirements, which I suppose come at a cost. Doubtless a seven-year-old didn’t know this when her parents discovered her new pets.”

Chris’ eyes went wide and heartbroken, “Wait a minute, so you… so she… they got rid of them?”

“From what I was aware, she got to keep the puppy, but was given several chores in order to maintain its upkeep.”

“Well, why didn’t you tell her that?” Chris tried, still stuck on the idea of wishing for a beloved pet and then having it taken away. “Why didn’t you stop them? Why didn’t you help?”

“Not my job,” sneered the genie, “You wanted a lesson, Christopher. Some lessons are hard to learn. I’m here to grant the wish, but I have no bearing on the consequences. Like I said, I’m an agent of neither good nor evil. It’s lucky the stupid brat didn’t wish for a tiger, you can imagine how that would have ended.”

Chris shook his head, still upset over the fate of a pony and a parrot. “Why the hell would you do it, then?”

“Well, again,” Zach huffed, “I don’t really have a choice.”

“Right. This is your punishment,” remembered Chris, “Immortality, amazing magic powers, cozy travel-safe housing.”

Zach finally put the book down to glare at him, “Not exactly a perk.”

“What’s it like?” Chris asked, looking at the bottle again.

“Oh, it’s like any other prison cell, probably. Less the modern amenities.”

“How long have you been in there?”

The genie sighed heavily, “A very long time.”

“You aren’t giving me much, you know,” he griped, “I’ve just discovered there are other dimensions and immortal beings who grant wishes. Can you blame me for being curious?”

“Actually, yeah,” Zach scathingly replied, “I can blame you easily. I believe your kind have a saying about curiosity killing cats.”

“I just want to know what your purpose in the universe is.”

“What is the purpose of anything in the universe?” retorted the genie, “Have you figured out the meaning of life yet? Do tell me when your treatise wins the Nobel Prize.”

Chris gave a frustrated exhale, sitting back, “I just don’t get how being given stuff makes sense.”

Zach rolled his eyes and his head back against the sofa cushion, “My purpose on this plane is to grant the wishes of mortals so that we may learn that everything has a consequence.”

“Wait, we?” Chris caught on to the nuance of that statement. “We includes you? Genies? Or Djinn? Your people?”

“The smart ones are always so much more trouble,” Zach smiled wanly, shaking his head, “Fun, huh? I’m an agent of desire, and my punishment is never being allowed my own.”

“For how long?”

“As long as it takes,” the Djinn clenched his teeth.

“Well, what’s your desire?” Chris asked. “What would you wish for?”

Zach looked uncomfortably away.

“Ah, but you’re a prisoner!” exclaimed Chris, clapping his hands once, “I bet you’d wish for freedom, right?”

“What does it matter?” Zach scoffed, “I can’t grant my own wishes.”

“But someone else could. Right?” he reasoned, remembering the movie, “Could a person, a human, wish you free?”

“Doubtful,” Zach leaned his head back, looking at the ceiling, “Humanity being what it is, you can imagine how well that’s gone for me.”

Chris considered that and lifted his shoulders, “It could happen though. Someone could do it.”

“But they won’t,” Zach snorted, “Your kind are greedy, power hungry, short-lived pathetic little monsters who can’t conceive of anything outside of the tiny speck of space you occupy.”

“Wow, tell me how you really feel,” Chris balked. Here he’d just been talking about freeing this guy, and he turned around and insulted him. He held out the bottle again, “Maybe you should take a time out.”

The genie snarled at him, “There you go, just demonstrate how easily you’ll change your tiny mind about—”

“Get in the bottle, Zach.”

Unable to disobey, his vicious expression misted apart and sucked itself back inside of the crystal.

Chris held it in his hand, letting his own anger fizzle with an exhale, “You don’t have to get mad at me, you know,” he muttered. “Geez, whoever fucked you over, I’m not them.”

 

The next time Chris let Zach out, they didn’t speak for a few hours. Instead, Chris made himself do a few household chores while Zach flipped channels on the television. It felt annoyingly like having a roommate who didn’t hold up their end of the bargain. But then, asking Zach to take out the trash probably counted against him, so he did it himself.

After he’d run out of ways to occupy himself and stewing in more questions, he threw himself into his armchair and launched right in.

“So, if there are different planes of existence and Angels and stuff, does that mean there’s a higher power? Like, how much of all the religions do we actually have right? Is there a Heaven or a Hell or Nirvana or whatever?”

“Chris,” Zach shook his head with exasperation.

“You’re in prison for some reason,” Chris pressed. “What did you do before? Do all genies sit around in bottles granting wishes?”

“Of course not,” he looked insulted.

“Are all of your people immortal?”

This time the genie looked away, oddly vulnerable. 

“Come on, Zach, give me something.”

“You’re human, Chris, it’s not for you to know.”

“What, my puny brain can’t handle it?”

“Probably not,” Zach scoffed, sighing and folding his arms as he explained. “No. Djinn are not all immortal. We’re like you in some respects; we have systems of government, laws to follow, employment, family. We eat and sleep and fuck and reproduce. We live much longer than you, but we do die eventually, most of us. And no, I have no idea if there is an afterlife, nor do I care since it doesn’t apply to me.” He looked back over at Chris, who was listening raptly. “We are watchers, observers of the universe, trying to learn from it. Just like you.”

“Except you obviously have different influence over how things happen in the universe than we do.”

“Perhaps.”

“So what does that have to do with us? With humans.”

Zach sighed deeply, chewing his lip as he gave Chris a skeptical look, like he was pondering his ability to grasp this. “Some of our jobs entail being assigned to observe your lifetimes. Mostly, we just leave to your own devices, and to others we grant desires in order to see how you use them, how it affects your society as it moves within the universe.”

“And that was your job?” Chris asked. “So you’re like a scientist.”

Zach nodded.

“Who—or what—did you report to?”

“I reported to my superiors. Other Djinn. I assume they reported to theirs.”

“And who was that? Angels? God?”

Zach shrugged, “I honestly have no idea.”

Chris looked around his apartment warily. Zach’s dark eyes felt observant enough. “Does every human have a Djinn watching them? Were you mine?”

“No,” Zach said, “I’ve been imprisoned for a long time, remember? Not all humans have potential to be influential, or they can gain or lose it in time. Anyway, part of the whole Bottle thing is that I fall into completely random hands, a stroke of chance, a wild card. So no, your notion of fate or predetermination doesn’t fit in.”

“Huh,” Chris pondered. What a weird system. “Still like Angels and Demons though. Everything in balance, right?”

“No,” Zach sighed with annoyance, “The universe is in constant flux, but balance has nothing to do with it. Angels are beings of another plane. They rarely intervene on this one, or on mine, that I’m aware of. And Demons simply don’t exist.” He shook his head, “You allow petty human ideology to narrow your mind. Your people have misinterpreted Djinn as evil beings for millennia. We are not. We make desires come to pass, that’s all. Some of your people decided along the way that desiring anything but the hand you are dealt is bad. Some use their desires to commit bad deeds, some good deeds. The balance you’re talking about already exists within humanity.”

“What do you mean?”

“Hitler, Chris, or Gandhi, if you will. Manson. Mother Theresa. The capacity to do good things or evil things is an entirely human one. Placing blame on Djinn is just your pathetic excuse to have a scapegoat for the atrocities you commit of your own Free Will. ‘The Devil made me do it’, you say. No. The Devil doesn’t exist. You did it yourself. Murder, abuse, genocide, lying to your mother. You did it.”

“Hey thanks,” Chris huffed sardonically, “I may have lied to my mom on occasion, but I’m pretty sure of the listed offenses, that’s the only one on my hands. You know we have a saying. Don’t tar everyone with the same brush.”

“Then don’t do the same with Djinn. We’re neutral. We have Free Will, just like you. We are capable of doing good and bad things, just like you. We can make mistakes.”

“You made a mistake,” Chris pointed out, “That’s why you’re in prison.”

Zach made a face. “I… misjudged my assignment.”

“So you… what, you were doing your job, observing one of these people, and you fucked it up big time? That’s why you’re being punished?”

“You could say that.”

“Must have been a hell of a mistake,” Chris pondered. “But you got immortality, though. Isn’t that a reward?”

Zach aimed a sour look at him. “That right there is why you are human. Your kind fear death, you fear ending. You’re not supposed to know what is beyond until it comes for you. It’s fundamental to your existence, your short time of self awareness. You have no grasp of what eternity truly is.”

Chris stared at his hands, at the lines on his palms. A fortune teller on the Venice Beach boardwalk had once read them, telling him of success and long life. That was long before he’d found Zach. “Alright, I’ll buy that. I just don’t understand. You told me humans inherited this plane from you. I don’t get why we’re separate if our people are so much alike.”

“We are not alike.”

“Alike enough that we do the same things, maybe make the same mistakes, for different reasons. I mean, we still kill people as a punishment for crimes, because it’s the worst thing we can think of. But if there’s something else beyond death that we don’t know about, then maybe it isn’t a punishment after all.”

Zach heaved a sigh. “I don’t know either, Chris. I never was that high up the totem pole. Certainly not now.”

“You’re high up enough to know immortality is bad.”

“If Humans used more of their brains, they’d know too, regardless of what comes beyond for you,” Zach grumbled, “Immortality is living forever. Conscious thought, sentience, unanswered questions. All the shit that comes with life, _forever_. Pain, sadness, anger, joy, envy, hunger, loneliness, boredom. All of it. For all time.”

“You listed joy in there,” Chris told him.

“Happiness is fleeting. Especially in prison.”

“I’d rather have fleeting happiness than none, though.”

Zach let his head fall back on the sofa, closing his eyes. 

“You’d rather have freedom? Even if it means you have no magic powers? And that you’ll die? All the shit that comes with being mortal?” Chris asked.

“I’m not worthy of the freedom of death either,” Zach said dully.

“What does that even fucking mean?”

The genie didn’t open his eyes. “Do you ever stop talking?”

Chris huffed, standing up to go haul the vacuum to the bedroom and get a wall between them again. “Yeah yeah, puny humans can’t know anything. Just that we’re stuck on a spinning marble in space with a minuscule amount of time to do something meaningful, I get it.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris and Zach learn more about each other, and Chris makes his first wish.

The next time they spoke, the genie had questions of his own. What the year was—2006; what shows were popular on television—American Idol and every other type of shitty reality show; what was the internet and how did it work; when did phones become wireless and how did they work. They had long conversations about world politics and who were this century’s best in science, mathematics, literature, great new discoveries and inventions. 

Chris hadn’t had someone so intellectual to talk to since college. Most of the time he had to turn on his computer and look up the stuff the genie asked. And for someone who hadn’t been out and about since probably around 1987, Zach seemed to adapt fairly well to the 21st century. Even his clothes and hair changed with observation. He’d alter his appearance after seeing an outfit on television or in a magazine. Once, Chris came out of the bathroom to him wearing an incredible three piece suit that was a little much for lounging around in. Sometimes he’d do longer or shorter hair, or a beard. Apparently genies were a particularly vain and preening species of inter-dimensional being.

Of all the things about his appearance that he could change at will, the chains arounds his wrists remained a fixture. He could make them smaller and often did, wearing them as simple delicate strands of gold, others as solid bracelets, but they never left him entirely. 

His only possession was the bottle. He looked at it as though it had personally wronged him, but got weird if he didn’t know where it was. Naturally, Chris decided to test how far Zach could physically be from it, which turned out to be not very far, something like a hundred feet before he started to get really panicky.

After a couple of months, Chris fell into a routine of having Zach around. He hadn’t had roommates since he’d made a little extra money and got this sweet little pad to himself, but it was a little bit like that. Except Zach never had people over, didn’t eat his food, and didn’t make a mess. He mostly watched TV or read his collection of books, and kept Chris company. It wasn’t bad. He’d even made Zach watch the old Disney cartoon, and had been sorely disappointed when the genie’s reaction was less than impressed.

“It isn’t realistic.”

“Well, duh, it’s a fucking fantasy fairytale, Zach,” Chris pressed. “What about the ending, though, huh? Aladdin freed him, like I told you.”

Zach merely looked back at him with that haughty holier-than-thou bitchface, “Like you said, ‘it’s a fucking fantasy fairytale’.”

It took awhile longer for Chris to come around to the idea that only he could see and hear the genie. Once, Patrick had dropped by unannounced, and like with the cops that first day, Zach had watched his interactions with something between amusement and disdain, pulling faces and moving things around behind his back until Pat had told him he was acting like a fucking weirdo, and Chris finally tried to let it go.

It was like having an imaginary friend, or even a pet that didn’t need a ton of upkeep. Chris would always ‘put Zach away’ before he went to bed, and then let him out again in the morning before he left for anything. Zach sulked about it, much like a dog being crated or a kid who didn’t want to go to bed, which only reinforced Chris’ idealization of him.

The first time Chris brought home a girl he’d met at a bar, he’d completely forgotten about it. Zach walked out of the bedroom while Chris was getting boob-deep on his sofa and it pretty much killed his boner entirely.

“What is it?” the girl gasped. “What’s wrong?”

Chris had frozen, staring at Zach’s raised eyebrows, and then hopped off like he’d been caught by his mom, blushing furiously.

Zach rolled his eyes, did an about-face and went back into the bedroom.

“Wait!”

“Wait for what?” the girl—Stacy or something—asked.

He darted a glance back at her, scooping the bottle up off the coffee table, “Um, wait. Wait, just a sec. Okay?”

She giggled, lowering her eyelashes, “What, is your room a mess? I don’t care.”

Chris shook his head in apology, quickly lying, “I do, though.”

He jogged after Zach and closed the door, “Um, so.”

“Relax, Chris,” Zach said, lounging on the bed. “She couldn’t see me, remember?”

“Yeah,” he shifted his feet. “Okay, I just… feel weird now.”

“It’ll come back, you’re young.”

“No!” Chris huffed, holding out the bottle. “Could you just…”

Zach glared darkly. “Listen, I have no interest in watching you copulate. I will make myself scarce. Look, poof.” He abruptly disappeared in a puff of smoke, his voice disembodied. “See?”

“Okay, that’s even creepier, though,” Chris said. “Just… go in the bottle? Please? I’ll let you out in a bit, just…”

Reappearing, the look on Zach’s face was so scorned as he whooshed away into the bottle, Chris didn’t know what to make of it. By the time he went back to the living room, Simone had her shirt back on.

“Who were you talking to?”

“Uh, no one,” he fidgeted, setting the bottle on a shelf. “No one important. Got a phone call. Sorry.”

“Are you okay?”

Chris sat down on the couch, looking at her sadly. She was pretty and fun, and geez he wanted to, but nope, his hard-on wasn’t coming back. Not tonight. “I… I’m sorry. I’m just not feeling this tonight.”

Once he’d apologized again and paid for the girl’s cab home, he let Zach back out.

“Okay, so,” Chris started, “I think we need to establish some ground rules.”

“I thought we’d done that,” said Zach, “You make wishes, I grant them. I could make her come back, if you want.”

“Dude, no,” Chris waved that off, “I’m not wasting a wish on a one-and-done.”

“Suit yourself.”

“Kay, so number one.”

“Don’t interrupt while you’re having sex.”

“No,” Chris frowned, but then waved a hand, “Well, yeah. Don’t do that. And then, don’t do weird shit when I have people over. I mean, can they see you moving my stuff around?”

“If I didn’t make said stuff disappear on contact, which I do, most of the time.” Zach said, “Humans are so reactionary.”

“Oh,” Chris blinked. “Okay, well. Just don’t do weird shit. I don’t like my friends being fucked with for your amusement.”

“Right,” Zach rolled his eyes, “Anything else?”

“Just… be inconspicuous if I have people over, I guess,” Chris said, trying to have some authority. “Or I’ll have to put you in the bottle.”

The genie scowled darkly, saying, “Fine,” like a petulant teenager. 

And that seemed to be the end of it. Chris didn’t have company over all that often, but on the few occasions he did, Zach didn’t distract him too much after their little chat. If it was a hook up, Zach would vanish accordingly. He said he was sleeping, which was apparently a thing he did outside of his bottle. If it was business, or Chris had friends over, he’d lurk and watch quietly at times, and Chris eventually got used to letting his eyes skip over him. The guy was an observer of humans after all, might as well let him observe.

Then came a day when Chris had a bunch of buddies over to watch a seminal round of baseball. Spirits were high and brews were flowing. Zach had come out to watch, and even seemed to enjoy the back and forth jubilance of his friends.

The game went into extra innings for an exciting bases-loaded finish, and a couple of his friends jumped up, shouting and whirling around in their excitement as their team took the game. They jostled into the bookcase where he’d arranged several of the bottles from that old box. He didn’t usually keep Zach’s bottle among them, but in shifting things around while hastily cleaning up, he’d absently set it there instead of taking it to his bedroom.

As several of the bottles fell, shattering on the hardwood, he saw Zach in the hallway by the bedroom door, a brief flash of his true form sending a scorch of smoke to the ceiling.

“Guys, what the fuck?”

“Oh shit, dude, sorry,” Mike cringed, nudging a few of the shards with a tennis shoe. 

Reid knelt down to pick up some of the bottles that had managed not to break, having fallen on the corner of the area rug. Chris saw the genie’s bottle there, and quickly darted to snatch it up before anyone else touched it. 

“Were these antiques or something?” Reid asked, hastily putting the bottles he’d grabbed back on the shelf, “I’m sorry, man.”

“No, they’re…” he looked over, seeing Zach sliding his shoulders down the wall to huddle, a strong smell of ozone in the air as if an electrical socket had shorted out. “Uh, they’re mostly junk, it’s okay.”

They tried to help clean up until Mike stabbed himself in the thumb with a piece of glass, and by the time Chris was searching for bandaids and then digging his dustpan out of the cupboard under the sink, the rest of his friends were making their excuses and heading out the door, and that was that.

“Assholes,” Chris muttered, grabbing for his dustbuster to get the tiny pieces. He didn’t want to be walking around out here in bare feet and step on anything. 

Zach was still in the hallway, crouched and staring at the mess as Chris sucked up the rest of the shards. 

“Are you okay?”

The genie shook his head. “They broke them.”

Chris nodded, emptying the dustbuster into the kitchen trash bin that he’d brought out. “Yeah, they did.”

“Don’t…” Zach shivered. “Don’t let them do that.”

“I couldn’t really stop them, it was an accident.”

“Don’t… break things.”

“You mean your bottle?”

He nodded, looking incredibly strange, his face anguished.

“What happens if the bottle breaks?”

Zach’s expression blanked and tightened as he took a slow breath in.

“What would happen, Zach?” Chris picked up Zach’s bottle again to examine it. The mouth of it had a little chip that wasn’t there before, but it was otherwise whole. “You’d be trapped out here, wouldn’t you?”

“No. It’s a prison designed to tether,” Zach murmured. Even with his face blank, his eyes said so much. It was obvious he was terrified. “I’d be trapped _inside_.”

“What’s inside this thing?” Chris asked, “I mean, you say it’s a prison, but… how did you get in here? Why do you hate it so much?”

Zach took a deep breath, “My world and yours are like… sheets of paper. On my plane, I was taken to—no one goes there, the Wastelands—and made to enter an oubliette.” He lifted his wrists, with their chains, “They bound me to it, to my prison, and then… and then it was closed.”

“So I’m guessing it’s not full of pillows, then.”

Zach shook his head, eyes distant, elsewhere. “Inside, there’s nothing. Cold, dark, narrow. There’s no sleep, no light, no air. There’s only time.” He looked up sadly, “I’m made of fire, Chris. Fire in a vacuum is barely alive.”

“But you said… you said you needed those things. Air, sleep. You’d die without…” Chris’ eyes widened, “But you’re immortal, you can’t die, can you? All you can do is… suffer.” Zach’s face was full of agony. “Jesus. How long have you been in there? At once, I mean.”

Zach lifted a shoulder, and it was almost casual but for the fear in his eyes. “A couple of decades, before you found me. Sometimes only hours. Sometimes centuries. Sometimes longer, it’s hard to keep track after the first hundred years or so.”

“And the only way you get out is if… if someone lets you out? On this side?”

“One side of my prison touches your plane. When my Master calls for me, I can’t disobey. I don’t want to. Out here, at least I can exist. I can breathe. I can rest.”

“And the other side? To your plane?”

“It’s shut. Sealed, buried under a thousand miles of ice. I’m chained to it, to my world,” Zach whispered. “But I can never go back. I’m exiled forever.”

“And if the bottle breaks, you’re stuck in there forever?” Chris tried to reason it out, shaking his head. “That doesn’t make any sense. A broken bottle is open. Permanently.”

“No,” Zach let out a slow breath. “A broken bottle is shattered. It’s not open or closed; it’s _broken_. It has no purpose any longer. It’s nothing to you to throw away broken things and scatter the pieces,” he said dully, glaring at the trashcan full of broken glass, “The bottle is here, on your plane, but the cell I’m bound to is In Between. If the bottle breaks, there’s nothing to be released from. I would be locked in there forever.”

Chris ached in his chest. This person, this living thing was doomed to a torturous figment of a life, for all time, except at the whims of his Masters—Humans, who were impulsive, self-absorbed, greedy bastards. Most probably didn’t care about what it was like. Most had probably never even asked. He blinked back the heat in his eyes. No one deserved a punishment like that.

“I won’t put you in there again,” Chris told him, “At least… at least not unless I absolutely have to.”

The genie shrank back against the wall with a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

Chris hauled himself up, hesitating before he palmed Zach’s hot shoulder, patting it before taking up the broom and trash can to put them away, “It’s no big deal.”

But it was a big deal.

Unfortunately, there were often times when putting Zach in the bottle was necessary. Mostly when Chris had to travel, which he was doing a bit of these days, bouncing from LA to New York and sometimes elsewhere for auditions. When he did, he packed it carefully, keeping it close in his carry-on rather than checked bags, and he’d let him out as soon as he got to a hotel. He felt shitty about it every time, and tried to soften it by telling Zach exactly how many hours it would be. He could always just leave Zach out at home, but…

It was strange, the attachment he’d developed in just a few months. He hadn’t even made a wish and didn’t think about that particular aspect of their association too much. When he did, he couldn’t think of it for long without psychoanalyzing the situation in circles. But Zach was great to have around for a multitude of other things: someone to talk to when he felt existential, someone to debate about the world and books and life and his own ideas and insecurities. Someone who was always there, always available. No matter what time it was or how stupid the question or conversation, Zach was there to invariably pull Chris’ head out of his ass, usually with a helpful amount of snark and a surprising dose of reality. He was quickly becoming the friend—if he could be called one—that could always be depended on.

So Chris went to his auditions, had meetings with his manager and agent and did his level best to find some work. But nothing was happening for him. That wasn’t to say he wasn’t getting offers or taking any jobs at all, but if he could avoid any more drugged-out starlet comeback vehicles and awful TV movies, he would. And that was nearly all his agent could come up with.

“This is such bullshit,” he said, slapping down another trashy script. “Did you read this?”

Zach glanced at the bound pile of papers on the coffee table for a second and then smirked, going back to Chris’ book of Gabriel García Márquez stories. 

“I’m better than this, right?”

“I certainly hope so.”

“I am.”

“Mm.”

“I’m so fucking tired of waiting around for my life to start,” he grumbled, “Maybe I should just move out East, try the stage for awhile. Broadway, baby. There were a whole bunch of open auditions last time we were out there.”

Zach read on without comment.

“I don’t suck at this, do I?” wheedled Chris, “I mean, I’m a decent actor, right?”

“I don’t know how qualified I am to say, but you do quite well opposite spoiled princess types. Or as the princess yourself.”

“Shut up,” he scowled, “I wish I could just find the one thing, you know? The one thing that’s going to take me where I need to go. Get the respect I want on my own merits.”

Zach took a deep breath, closed the book and tucked it by his thigh. “Finally.”

“What?”

“You said _I wish_ ,” the genie told him, raising his eyebrows, “Do you?”

Chris stopped and really considered that. _He could_. He could wish for this! He’s spent all this time over-analyzing and bullshitting himself into believing this wishing thing was all really complicated, and yet he’d had the option all along to wish for whatever he wanted. “Yeah. Yeah, I want to make it as an actor. I want to make it big and really be somebody.”

“You wish for fame, then?” the genie looked at him appraisingly, tenting his fingers.

“Not exactly,” he said, his voice taking on an earnestness, pinching his fingers together to approximate the idea he was trying to grasp, “I want… immortality.”

“No you don’t,” Zach snapped. “Trust an immortal on this.”

“But—”

“I won’t do it again,” Zach got up, suddenly angry and pacing. “Wish for something else.”

Chris’ brows drew together, “Wait, what do you mean, ‘again’?”

Zach stopped, blinked and mirrored him. “What do you mean by immortality?”

“To be remembered,” Chris answered simply. “Achilles. Only not, you know, like Brad Pitt shot in the ankle, hopefully.”

“You don’t want to live forever?” the genie clarified.

“Well, no, not literally, I just mean in the figurative sense. Not just success, but… the right kind of it, you know? I want to be successful for doing good work, for doing great acting, whether it’s stage, film, or tv. I want to do the roles that make people think, that change the industry, that people remember for years, decades. I want to be remembered for being _good_ , not just to get the awards and be famous.”

Zach sat back down, looking thoughtful, “But you want that as well.”

“Well, I mean… yeah,” Chris grinned sheepishly. “A little recognition might be nice too.”

“Such self-importance, Christopher.”

“Well, someone has to have some,” he muttered. “I’m trying to find my purpose here. What’s the point otherwise?”

“You wish to be known as the best of your craft,” Zach specified, his eyes going faraway and then coming back. “You might find that with the good comes the bad. There’s rarely one without the other. You said yourself, without balance there’s chaos.”

Chris stroked his chin, thinking. “Maybe. But… but won’t the good outweigh it?”

Zach merely shrugged, “I don’t claim to predict the future. You know how this works, Chris. I make it come to pass, how you handle it is your problem.”

“Okay,” Chris said, “Then I want it. I’m tired of waiting around, trying to figure out who I am.”

Zach fixed his dark eyes on him again, “Is that official?”

Chris puffed himself up. “Genie, I wish to be a great, successful actor!”

Zach rolled his eyes, and then closed them, inhaling through his nose and going still. Chris sat up straight, grinning in anticipation like a kid at Christmas. When Zach’s eyes popped back open, he sat back casually, “Okay. Done.”

Nothing happened. 

“Wait, that’s it? There’s no, like—”

“Were you expecting me to sing and dance?” Zach taunted, opening his book again, “No. You do actually want to experience your wish coming to fulfillment, don’t you? That takes time. Now, go forth and be successful.”

“But how will I know if it worked?”

His phone rang on its charging station from the kitchen. Chris ignored it, waiting for his answer.

“Maybe you should get that,” the genie arched a brow. “Might be important.”

Keeping his eyes on Zach, Chris went to the kitchen, stopping the persistent ring with a punch of a button. “Yeah.”

“Chris. CHRIS. Man, do I have a script for you,” his agent said on the speaker. Chris could almost hear him vibrating with excitement.

“Yeah? What is it?”

“You ready for this? _Star Trek_.”

Chris deflated, redirecting his attention to his sad little kitchenette, with a pile of dirty dishes waiting in the sink, a pizza box on the counter above the trash cabinet. “Really, dude? Come on.”

“JJ Abrams is rebooting it for Paramount,” he exclaimed, “CHRIS! They want you to read for the lead, for Captain Kirk, man! This could be huge!”

“You know I don’t want to do shit like that,” he whined. “What’s going on with _White Jazz_? I haven’t heard anything in weeks.” He darted his eyes back to Zach hopefully.

“Rumor says Clooney’s out, and if it’s true, that one’s dead in the water with the writers’ strike,” his agent told him, failing to sound remotely apologetic. “Chris, I seriously think you should read for this. Just an audition. This could lead to bigger and better things for you, I promise. This could catapult you to the stars, man. Literally!”

Geez, his agent was a dork. He looked back at the genie, this guy who was supposed to be making all his dreams come true. Zach’s dark eyes glittered from his elegant sprawl in the dim room, one eyebrow lifting in some sort of omnipotent expectation.

“Okay,” Chris sighed into the phone, “Okay, yeah, set it up.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Making houses and homes.

The reboot was a success, certainly in terms of Chris’ career. Three years after he’d made that first wish, he was now being asked for, sometimes even courted by studios and directors. He had salary negotiations instead of flat entry-level sums. He put another several films in the can, mostly mid-range stuff, working with people he’d always wanted to work with, a couple indie festival things and a few big budgets, because now people knew his name and he could actually choose to do little passion projects instead of taking whatever crap came around in order to keep his SAG membership and some padding in his bank account. His parents came to all his premieres; hell, he even did a little film with his dad like he’d always wanted. He traveled the world doing press and not doing press. He made a ton of new friends and his old ones were doing well for themselves. He even got a few gigs on stage.

It hadn’t all happened with the snap of magic fingers, and Chris really came to appreciate that. It felt like he had done the work. And he had worked hard, put in the early mornings and late nights, boring meetings and networking, all the press and photoshoots, and long hours in traffic and transit.

But Zach had been right, the good things came with the bad. Going across the street for a coffee or down to the grocery store or even sitting on his own damn balcony became a paparazzi spectacle for some reason. His publicists set him up to be photographed with actresses and models to generate interest. The ones he tried to date for real didn’t last, and he didn’t know why he couldn’t make it work, but the public interest in his private life was a major annoyance. While his career was taking off and he loved his job, his personal day-to-day life off the set was sometimes pain in the ass.

But at least he’d had the foresight to know this was the way it worked. It was the nature of success in the entertainment business. He wasn’t just Chris Pine, wannabe actor, he was the new Captain Kirk, space captain and nerd magnet. He had to play that role, so to speak, and try to keep his personal life close to the vest.

In the summer of 2010, he finally bought the house on the hill. He’d had his eye on it for awhile, but actually biting the bullet and signing the papers had been a little crazy and a lot scary. After all, he was banking on his life staying on a trajectory that was guaranteed by a genie, and the mortgage was not cheap. He’d thought of himself as a pretty down-to-earth, middle-class guy, but maintaining that headspace with the level of fame he’d reached was difficult. He was loathe to give up his beloved apartment across from his favorite coffeeshop, but it just wasn’t practical anymore. Now he was accepting the keys to his first real house, and it was a gorgeous 1940’s estate in the trendiest neighborhood in town. Not a mansion, he’d never be that kind of guy, but this… walking into his own home, he finally felt like he’d arrived.

He let Zach out of the bottle once the movers had left.

“So,” he spread his arms out in the spacious living room. There was even a snazzy wet bar, just like he’d imagined years ago. “What do you think?”

Zach glanced around the room and up at the high, exposed beam ceilings. “I think you need a decorator. And some furniture that doesn’t look like it came from a frat house.”

Chris dropped his hands. “It has a wine cellar, and this huge garden, and look, watch this.” He went to the switch on the wall, opening the massive retractable glass windows to the patio and pool outside.

The genie raised a pretentious eyebrow. Chris jogged out, pointing at the far corner of the property across the pool, “Picture this, right? An orchard, right over there. Oranges and peaches, maybe an avocado tree… And then, over here,” he went out around to the sunny side, “Terraces for a vegetable garden. Lettuce and carrots and tomatoes.”

Zach gave a headshake at his enthusiasm. “And you’re going to do this all yourself?”

“Well, no,” Chris said, “I’ll have to hire gardeners, I guess.” Paramount had booked him for at least two big features and were pushing for him to headline a Tom Clancy reboot, on top of the second and third Trek films they had him under contract for. All of that would probably have him away from home for awhile afterwards, among a dozen other things his team had in the pipeline. He had a whole management team now. That was another thing about success; he was basically scheduling out his life a year in advance. Free time was sort of hard to come by. 

“I wish I could get a dog,” he lamented, which had Zach eyeing him with interest. “Figure of speech. I do want one though. Someday.”

Zach merely shook his head, and it could almost be called fond exasperation if Chris thought about it too hard. He took in a deep breath of the fragrant air coming off the bougainvilleas, surveying his new place. His domain. He could make this a real home, his retreat from it all. With a giddiness, he took a running start and leapt, fully clothed, into his very own pool, making an epic splash.

Surfacing, he laughed and turned to find Zach again, standing well back. “Come on in, man, the water’s fine!”

“Think I’ll pass,” the genie said. Right, he was made of fire.

Chris swam to the tiled edge and hauled himself out, clothes streaming heavily. He tugged off his t-shirt and rung it out.

“What’s your home like?”

“I’ve told you,” Zach muttered, avoiding the splatters he made with disdain, “it’s a prison.”

“I mean your real home,” Chris said, working at the soaked laces of his shoes to kick them off, “Your… dimension, or whatever.”

“It’s not my home anymore,” he grumbled, but Chris didn’t back off, waiting until Zach gave in with a huff. “It’s warm, much warmer than here. And dry,” he made a face at Chris shaking his head like a dog, then raised a hand, palm out. Chris was abruptly caught in a strange whirlwind of hot hair, swirling around him until his shorts stopped sticking and his skin and hair was dry. He laughed with delight at the magic trick.

“What I miss the most is the feeling…” Zach now said, quietly, “Our storms aren’t like your damp, cold world, with water and ice falling from the sky. They’re celebrations of fire and energy. The charge of it…” he snapped his fingers, and Chris felt every hair on his body stand on end, smelled crisp ozone in his nostrils before it swept away again on the breeze. He scrubbed at his hair, still feeling the static in it, his ears popping.

“In my world, there are whole cities built of diamonds and gems your kind would covet. Everything is formed from fire and the forces it rules. Forests of crystalline trees, mountains that burn and build themselves higher, creatures that break them into their base components to be made again.”

“Sounds beautiful,” Chris said softly, watching the faraway longing on the genie’s face.

Zach came back to himself with a blink. “You wouldn’t like it.”

“How do you know I wouldn’t?”

“You’re a human, a Water-borne,” Zach told him, “My world would kill you in seconds. Your entire existence depends on two elements that on my plane barely cling together in the Wastelands in defiance.” He toed at the patch of wet Chris had made on the patio bricks, watching it evaporate around his bare foot. “The rules of the universe still apply, elements still react to each other, even when the environment rarely allows for it. Bound together, hydrogen and oxygen make life for your kind; cold and pain and death for mine. We left this plane when it turned from rock and fire to water and ice. It was eons before we learned to manipulate the elements and cross back over. Without that power, we wouldn’t be capable of observing your plane at all.”

“Is that why you watch us?” wondered Chris, “Because this world was once your home?”

“Perhaps. That was well before I was born.”

Chris sighed, thinking of how odd and different their lives were. His world was all about water and the ocean; he could see it, smell and feel its salty wind from here. For Chris, it was a major hallmark of home, a comfort he subconsciously missed when he was away from a coast for too long, only to be aware of it upon returning. Zach would never return to his home, never be able to feel what he missed. “You must hate this place.”

“Sometimes it’s tolerable,” the genie turned his face to the sky, “At least I can feel the sun.”

“Yeah,” Chris smiled. He looked out across his new digs with pride. It had to be better than the hell that was his bottle. “Yeah.”

 

Time passed. Months, and then years. 

Chris settled into his new home. He had friends and family over, enjoying the space and the resonance of filling it with memories. Zach was there, skirting the edges of his get-togethers, though he couldn’t technically be one of them. He was there in the quiet times too, sitting together reading new books, or watching the shows Zach so enjoyed on television. When Chris worked, he carefully packed the bottle along with him, keeping it in his hotel or his trailer or his dressing room, so Zach could have as much freedom and new places to see as possible while he was busy on sets or on location.

At some point, he’d even caught himself talking to other people about Zach, just like he was any other acquaintance of his. For a moment he worried if that was weird, but then shrugged it off. He hadn’t dropped the bombshell that he was a magical fiery genie or anything, just that his friend Zach had said this about the news or watched that show, like any other. And they accepted it without batting an eyelash, because why not? Everyone in his acquaintance knew lots of other people, so they probably just assumed Zach was someone in the mutual list they’d not met. Zach was as real a friend of his as any other, if not more.

Their conversations were the ones Chris sought out and got the most out of. Zach met his overactive imagination and psychoanalyzing with a surprising amount of pragmatism for an inter-dimensional fire spirit. As scathing and superior as the genie could be—and often was—he indulged Chris’ lowly humanist philosophical debates, his questions about time and history, and sometimes, just occasionally, Chris triumphantly got one over and had gotten Zach pondering something that in thousands of years, he’d never considered before.

His garden flourished. Of course he had hired landscapers to plant his trees and build the terraces, and gardeners to come in every week and tend everything, though he did try to do some of it on his own whenever he was at home. But nonetheless, his trees produced baskets of fruit, though he’d been told it wasn’t likely they’d produce in the first year or two after transplanting. His veggies went wild too, he was giving them away. He’d go out and pick the blood oranges in the evenings, sometimes peel one right off the tree and eat the sweet sun-warmed segments right under the leaves, the dark red juice staining his fingers as he watched Zach in the gloaming, taking in the sunset over the city.

He often came across things he’d always thought of as unattainable. An original piece of art he really liked, a first edition of a favorite book, a classic car he’d dreamed of owning as a teenager. Suddenly they were there, and available for a price that he once would have cringed at. Chris didn’t think he was a particularly materialistic guy, but damn, he had the means now, why the fuck not?

It took awhile for him to realize that maybe Zach had done all this for him too. If not as part of his wish, then as something of a roundabout thank you. He thought about asking, but just seeing the guy have a little bit of happiness was enough. Zach wouldn’t have admitted he did anything for free, anyway, that was probably against the rules or something.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Balance.

As the years rolled along, Chris’ success had to be evened out. Though Zach insisted the balance wasn’t a fated thing, to Chris it certainly seemed like that was the way the universe operated. 

Paramount’s monkey suits were unhappy with the second Trek’s final tally, despite its profits far surpassing the first one. It was compared with other genre films that the studio thought it should have matched—rights to which they had sold off a few years earlier, and were obviously really pissed about another studio making a mint. The Jack Ryan film was simultaneously called decent and a failure; it made a profit, but again, not enough of one to please some people, and while no one could put their finger on why it failed, somehow that was on Chris’ head too. His manager was up his ass all too often, telling him to watch his step in every direction, reminding him of studios’ questioning his ability to carry a film. The paps were too, watching every move he made. The solution was work, work, and more work, much of it having him live out of his suitcase for months on end without managing to please anyone or get a pat on the head for trying. 

He lay awake at night sometimes, anxious and distracted. He worried that he’d become _that_ actor, the one doing his very best and but never getting a good review, never being thought of by casting directors, or worse, being passed over because of his previous failures. He talked to his parents and his friends and his therapist, but nobody had the answers he sought. 

Then he tried ignoring it entirely, throwing caution to the wind and losing himself in other people, living the highlife and trying not to worry so much. Time went on, being busy and anxious and traveling and getting fucking exhausted with people, and any time he could, he sought silence and solitude.

He went to England, Vancouver, New York, New Zealand, probably other places in between, he honestly couldn’t remember for all the shit that kept piling up in his wake. By the time he finally came back to LA for a short respite, his home felt weird and empty, and it was because something—someone, he finally realized—had been missing. He’d been there all the time, in his bottle, wrapped carefully in a scarf and tucked into a pocket of the toiletry bag in his luggage, for probably five straight months.

Upon being let loose, Zach refused to speak to him. He materialized, feigned working a kink from his neck, and then promptly vanished. Chris searched the house for hours, calling and trying to find where he’d gone, knowing he’d likely up and went invisible, just to watch him stumble around apologizing like an idiot.

“I’m sorry, okay? Just… so much shit has gone wrong lately,” Chris tried, collapsing in his chair. “I fucked up. I… I got in trouble. I got arrested. I’ve _never_ been in trouble before, I’ve never done anything so fucking stupid. My publicist and manager and my mom and everybody is screaming at me, I’m losing contracts because of it, I might not be allowed to travel to some places… I…” he sighed heavily, raking both hands through his hair, elbows on his knees, at a loss. “I had someone and lost her… I just wish I could make it all go away.”

“Is that an official wish?”

Chris raised his head to find Zach sitting across from him, staring at him in that dark, impenetrable way. Hearing his voice after so much time had passed was startling.

“You could…?”

Zach gave him a long suffering look. They’d had this conversation multiple times before. Yes, Zach could fix it, of course he could. He could probably make police records and tabloid reports vanish, wipe it from the memories of everyone involved, maybe even thousands of fans and studios breathing down his neck about contract violations and his agency about his latest box office disappointments and the damage to his career. Zach could do whatever magic he did and make it all go away. He was a genie. It was what he did.

But Chris would still know. He’d still know that he’d fucked up, and that he’d taken the easy way out, that he’d cheated. Hell, even if he rigged the wish so Zach took away his own memory of the whole event, what would stop him from drinking too much and thinking he could get behind the wheel and making the same fucking idiot mistake again? Nothing. He wouldn’t have learned a goddamn thing from it.

“No,” he said, sitting back, gripping the arms of the chair with finality. “No… I don’t wish for that. I… I made my bed, I guess. I have to just deal with the consequences.”

Zach merely reached for the TV remote.

“What?” Chris asked, “No snark, no ‘Congratulations, Christopher, you’ve taken the high road’? You’re not going to give me anything?”

Zach flicked his eyes back with a shrug, “Makes no difference to me.”

“Sheesh, your genie potential is really wasted on me, isn’t it?” Chris huffed, “It’s got be much more fun to make people wildly rich or attractive.”

“Haven’t I done that?” Zach arched an eyebrow.

“Well, I’m not surrounded by beautiful women in bikinis tossing cash in the air or jet-setting to Italy to model for Armani or anything.”

“Hmm,” Zach tilted his head, “Noted. Ooh! The Voice is on!”

 

The third Trek film was thrown together after dozens of rounds of hemming-and-hawing, script revisions and production infighting. At one point, it looked like it might not happen at all, and Chris found himself considering whether he was okay with it. He was contracted for three films, but a contract did not a film make, and there was a real possibility that it was just another series that ran its course and another character he’d have to mentally put to bed. That was part of why he’d originally been shy of the franchise route. He did have some affection for it, after all, James T Kirk was the role that had launched him into relevance, pun intended. If nothing else, he loved the people he worked with, and that counted for a lot. 

The Trek crew still got together whenever possible for dinner parties and birthdays, sporadic nights in random cities, or even a coffee or spare bite of lunch at a film festival, if that was all time and busy schedules allowed. Chris had been invited to weddings, welcomed babies, consoled after break-ups and met new significant others. Every one of them still called him Captain, both on and off set, something that so many years ago felt like a weird nerdy thing he wanted to avoid getting shoehorned into, but nowadays had an entirely different association. They had become something every actor dreams of having as part of a professional experience, and something a lucky few ever got. They were family.

So when _Star Trek Beyond_ was finally, hastily greenlit with Simon in the writer’s room and some new blood directing and producing, the fam got together again for what became the best experience of them all. It didn’t matter that the schedule was wacky or that entire new pages were often delivered while he was trying to coffee up in the make-up chair each morning. This time they were on locations away from LA, and it gave them the excuse to spend all hours together, on set and off, bonding them closer still. Oftentimes, because Chris rarely left him behind anymore, Zach was once again there to witness Karl and Simon’s pranks, Zoe and Sofia’s dances, the great dubsmash phenomenon, and their laughter and fuck-ups for the blooper reels, all the things that made this job in particular a total blast. These were his people, his crew, and he was their Captain.

It was why, when the studios put out the offer to option a fourth movie, even before they'd wrapped production on _Beyond_ , Chris had enthusiastically signed on the dotted line. These people were always there for him, and for that he’d probably do as many Treks as they asked. He joked with Zach that maybe one day, if he ever did lose the magical genie mojo, at the very least he would always have the Trekkie conventions to pay the bills. Hell, Karl already knew how that all worked, he was a regular fandom King Dork among the comic-cons, with more franchises to tap than anyone.

But losing the mojo seemed unlikely. He’d filmed some of his best work in the last couple of years. He had two films in the can besides Trek that had people talking, even whispering about Oscars. He had finally learned to balance his professional and private life much better. He even approached the long and arduous round of promo he’d be doing with a newfound positivity. Life was good. Life was actually fucking great.

Life, it turned out, was horribly, horrifyingly short.

Of all the shitty things that happened to balance with the good things in Chris’ life, the worst, by a long shot, was losing Anton.

Chris had hung up the phone hours ago without moving after the barrage of calls, unable to process beyond shock and pain and disbelief. The house settled around him, buffering the city sounds outside. An antique clock ticked like a metronome in the other room, its steady passage of time so simple, so dependable. Nothing moved, and if he didn’t either, maybe nothing was real.

But Zach moved, shattering through the stasis. He’d sat in the chair across from him through all of it, and he didn’t need to hear the other end, just like he didn't need to read the words in a book to take it all in. Zach was a magical, impermeable, immortal being that death couldn’t touch. He stood up and spoke in a sigh, “Chris—”

He was on his feet before he was even aware of himself, a punch flying, landing, the hard, heavy _thwack_ of his fist into Zach’s jaw satisfying. But only for the moment it took to realize he merely absorbed it like a sandbag with no injury at all.

“Fuck you,” he muttered through gritted teeth, and swung again and again and again, in the face, in the chest, anywhere he could connect, wanting to hurt and inflict the sort of suffering and agony he felt inside. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!” he raged until he stumbled and clutched for purchase, sobbing against the overheated solid body he hadn’t even so much as bruised.

He cried even harder when warm, gentle arms came up to pull him closer, to gather him up and allow his wet human tears and blubbering to dampen his shoulder. The genie held him close for ages until he exhausted himself, then carried him to the sofa, limp and drained. His hot fingers brushed back his hair and swept at his eyelids to soothe away the headache and the salty sting of tears with tenderness. But it only took away the physical pain, not the broken heart.

“It’s not fair,” he said in a whisper. 

“No,” Zach agreed, his expression soft and genuine. He sat on the floor beside him. “I wish I could fix it. I would if I could.”

There were limitations to the powers of Djinn after all, especially those who were condemned. If Zach couldn’t kill anyone, he couldn’t bring anyone back. The laws of the universe where finite and immovable.

When Zach had been on set with him, it had always been little Anton who struck his curiosity. For a genie who found young humans desperately shallow and annoying at best, he’d been continually astounded by the depth of wisdom and intelligence Anton had possessed. Once, he had wondered aloud to Chris what the Djinn thought, if Anton was one of those whose potential merited watching.

He lifted a hand, manifesting a white candle on the coffee table, the kind Chris’ mother kept around and lit in memory of his grandfather every year, though she wasn’t Jewish herself. Chris’ great grandparents had been Russian immigrants too, just like Anton and his parents, he remembered with a sniffle. During the first film, Victor and Irina had been on set often because Anton was still just a kid, no matter how brilliant he proved himself to be. Chris’d been invited to their family home for Shabbat dinners sometimes. Anton had been their beloved only child, and to Chris and the rest of the cast, he’d become like a little brother over the years, cherished and talented and so, so good. It wasn’t fair.

Human religions were a construct, Zach told him once. Their rituals were a way to seek comfort and solace when things in the universe were too big and terrible to understand. It had been that way for Djinn too, many eons ago.

Zach lit the wick with a brush of his finger, the pair of them watching it flicker as the sun went down.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Playing with fire.

Shanghai, 2AM. Clouds overlay the city, a damp chill working its way through his sweater. Press and promo again, this time for a film that was opening to spectacular reviews and advance ticket sales worldwide, some of the best of his entire career. This time he was happy to sit back and let his leading ladies to have all the attention they deserved.

Press and promo, and then all-night parties and people, but he’d begged off and retreated to the solitude of his hotel suite, citing exhaustion. He was tired. He was so tired he couldn’t even sleep.

“Those things will kill you, you know,” Zach said from the balcony door.

Chris took another drag, shaking his head at the admonishment, “Says the man made of fire.”

Approaching the railing, Zach inhaled and then brazenly blew out a similar long cloud of blue smoke in mockery.

Chris laughed, looking at the cigarette in his fingers. First one he’d had in weeks, to be honest, attempt number one hundred and whatever to quit. Gal’s beautiful little girl held her nose and gave him dirty looks anytime she'd ever caught him smoking, and it had compelled him more than most to try again. He’d done really well up until now, chewing gum like a fiend before he’d found this old, stale thing flattened in a pocket of his luggage that probably never got unpacked between various trips. It tasted like crap. He took another drag off it and shrugged, “I’m relapsing. Sue me.”

“Well, I do know what the inside of your lungs look like. You’re not so pretty in there.”

Chris made a face. “That’s kind of personal, don’t you think?”

“Not really,” Zach shrugged, “I get to know a lot about the people I serve. I know more about the ins and outs of your body and your brain than you’re probably willing to accept.”

“That doesn’t make much sense, considering how persnickety you were about my wish,” Chris pointed out, “You ought to have known exactly what it was I wanted, why did you question it so much?”

“To make you think it through,” Zach replied. 

“Still,” Chris countered.

They listened to the city below as he finished off the cigarette and rubbed it out on the railing with a heavy sigh.

“God, I want to get laid.”

“Welcome to the club,” Zach snorted, looking him over archly again, “You never seemed to have a problem in that area before.”

“I never wanted more out of it before,” he smirked. Sure, there were plenty of people readily available. He frowned, “Is that a common request? Getting laid?”

Zach shrugged, “About as common as you’d expect. The oldest profession and all that.”

“Really?” he wondered, “How common?”

“‘Bout half, probably.”

“Jesus,” laughed Chris, “So you’re a magical pimp.”

Zach exhaled tiredly, “Pretty much.”

“I’d probably want it to be with someone specific, though, someone totally unattainable,” he imagined. 

“No one is unattainable,” Zach told him. “You place people on pedestals with a false sense of importance. You’re all flawed by your very nature.”

“I guess,” shrugged Chris, “But it would kill the mystique, wouldn’t it? The fantasy is better than the reality. Nah, you’re right, I don’t think I’d waste a wish on that.”

“I had one guy use all three wishes for it,” Zach counted them on his fingers, “Bettie Page, Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe.”

Chris stared in surprise, “And you fixed it so this guy bedded all three of them?”

“Um,” hedged the genie, “Not exactly.”

“What do you mean?”

Zach paused, “Normally, executing this particular wish is a simple matter of putting my Master in the right situation to obtain a willing partner, making them appear a certain way, perhaps generating funds to pay said partner. Some don’t even involve any magic on my part at all,” he shrugged, “You humans are just incredibly naive and need your hands held to get anything of substance done. Still counts against your wishes though.”

“Wait, so how much of my wish needed…” Chris waggled his fingers, “magicking?”

Zach just sent him a sidelong eyebrow. Chris had asked him this question numerous times, and he’d never gotten a straight answer. 

“Unbelievable!” He laughed, shaking his head, “All this time you’ve had me thinking you were useful!”

“Hey, no answer doesn’t automatically amount to denial. Schroedinger’s cat, Christopher,” Zach retorted, “There are many possibilities here. Could I have made the pieces fall in your favor with my powers of suggestion? Of course. Could you have earned your place here on the 28th floor of this snazzy hotel all on your own, and I just gave your cute little butt a nudge in the right direction? Sure. You’re only human, the reality of whether the cat is alive, dead or both is not your place to know. But you can keep wallowing in your personal insecurity if you want, it looks better on you than the egos of some of your peers,” he finished with a wave. “Anyway, you made a wish; it was granted. It counts, regardless.”

“Well, technically,” Chris put in, “I don’t really know if I’ve gained my immortality.”

“I suppose you’ll have to die to find out.”

“Nah, I’d rather not,” said Chris, “Not yet.”

“Good. I’d rather you didn’t either.”

“See? You do like me.”

Zach rolled his eyes. It started to drizzle faintly, drops of moisture dotting the railing. The genie wrinkled his nose disdainfully at the sky, but stayed where he was.

“Jesus,” Chris laughed at himself, “That was so long ago. It’s weird the things you thought were so important.”

“You thought it was important, not me,” muttered Zach.

“You know I don’t really care about it now, right? I got exactly what I wanted. I got to make movies, be known, telling good stories that mean something to people. That was my wish. And it came true, just like you said. I don’t need immortality to know it, I just needed ten years to grow up a little,” Chris said, looking over at him again. “But I guess for you it was, like, seconds ago.”

“No, it was ten years,” Zach corrected. “Time is the one thing that’s always constant.”

Chris shivered, unconsciously moving a little closer to the radiating heat the genie gave off. He looked back at the foggy, glittering skyline, remembering what Zach had been talking about before Schroedinger’s cat. “You’re really good at derailing my questions.”

“It’s a talent,” Zach quipped.

“So your dude with the pin-ups, then,” rerouted Chris, “How did you grant his wish? What was your ‘not exactly’?”

Zach scanned the horizon. “It gets somewhat complicated when specific partners are desired but unwilling.”

He stopped there until Chris waved him on.

Sighing, he gestured to the city at large, “In order to grant this guy his wishes, I would have had to engage in a fair amount of trickery and mind games on three parties who wouldn’t have given this particular toilet stain the time of day. Ethically, I couldn’t do that.”

“Right. The Ethical Code of Genie,” Chris snorted.

“The law I am bound to, and bound for,” Zach raised his wrists with their chains, “And while I’m bound to grant my Master’s wishes no matter what kind of sleazy degenerate they are, regardless of whether they deserve anything, I can exercise the loophole of Free Will in a lot of ways.”

“So what did you do?” asked Chris, “You did grant this guy’s wishes. You had to.”

Zach trained his eyes outward from the balcony. “Sometimes all it takes is locating a prostitute and performing an illusion to make them appear to be someone specific. This creep, however, had certain industry connections and an obsessive knowledge of the women in question, as well as their whereabouts most of the time. The illusion had to be considerably more elaborate to convince him it was real, and to keep the women themselves from an unfortunate encounter.”

“How?”

“I’m a master of illusion, Chris,” Zach said, “And I also have Free Will.”

Chris finally put together the pieces Zach wasn’t saying, his eyes widening. “No way,” he blurted, “No way! So you…? _You_ took their places? Ugh! Ughhhh!”

“I didn’t say I was proud of it.”

“And this guy bought it?”

He lifted his shoulders nonchalantly, “I’m a better actor than you are. I can become anyone, certainly well enough to convince a pathetic fanatical human.”

“But why?”

Zach drew his finger through the rain drops along the edge of the railing, watching them sizzle and evaporate from his touch. “Sometimes I just want to get people over with,” he said quietly, “It’s easier.”

“No, why would you care enough about these women to protect them?” Chris asked. “You go out of your way to convince me you don’t care about my shitty decisions.”

The genie said nothing, jaw tightening as he glared resolutely through the falling rain.

“Hah!” Chris lightly punched his arm. “You do care, you softy. You care about us pathetic puny humans after all.”

Zach rolled his eyes, “Most of your kind aren’t worth the space you occupy.”

“And the rest?”

“Others are more tolerable.”

“Like me?” Chris grinned smugly.

Zach smirked, “Don’t give yourself so much credit, Pine.”

“Nah, you like me,” he concluded, “You said my butt was cute.”

“It’s been ten years and you’ve only used one wish,” Zach told him, “If you’d just hurry up with the other two…”

Chris shook his head as he left that hanging, looking out over the fuzzy city lights and thinking. “Actually, that was good of you, you know? Noble, I guess. I’m sure those ladies would have appreciated you taking one for the team, if they knew. My grandma was one of them, a pin-up girl, really popular during the war. I’m sure there were lots of creeps around her all the time.” He shook his head, thinking, “This whole fame thing is kind of weird that way. It’s really, really hard to find people who are genuine. There are so many who want something from you that they probably don’t deserve.”

The genie scoffed, “Oh, the irony.”

Chris laughed and then sighed. “I don’t even know what it is I want right now. What is it that I’m missing? I want… I want someone who knows me. Who knows everything about me… accepts me the way I really am. I want a real, honest connection.”

“You got a dog,” he was reminded, “Unconditional love, you said.”

“Yeah, and I’m never home to see her. I doubt she really knows who her person is, she just gets passed around to whoever is available to dog-sit for me,” he lamented. “Anyway, I want more than that. With a person. It’s been great, you know, just being in casual things, but…”

Zach turned around with a huff, leaning back on the railing. “I can’t make anyone fall in love, Chris. You know that.”

“I know,” he muttered, pressing his fingers into his eyes hard enough to see stars. “Who knew it would be like this, right? I’m at the top of my game. I have more money than I know what to do with. Everyone wants something from me, but none of them want _me_ , though,” he sighed. “None of them want the guy who wants to sit on his couch on the rare days he’s home and watch historical documentaries. They don’t want a guy could throw it all away and…I dunno, open a used bookstore. Sometimes I want to throw out the fucking phone and grow a long beard and not speak to anyone for a year and not have people have a fit because I didn’t see their latest snapchat or whatever. None of them want who I am when I turn it off. It’s like high school all over again. It’s not fair.”

“Well, boo fucking hoo,” Zach snarled suddenly. “I’m imprisoned in a bottle for all eternity and the only time I get to come out is to listen to humans bitch about their pathetic problems, after I give them all the things they believe will make life fair. Imagine their surprise and astonishment when it never happens.” With a smoky puff of air, he stalked back into the room.

“Zach, wait,” Chris called after him, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that!” He shook his head, considering their conversation. 

Wait, what the fuck? Why was he suddenly in the wrong here? Just because he wanted something the genie couldn’t provide didn’t mean he had to take this shit. Zach was just in a snit because Chris got him to admit he cared. The genie cared about _him_ , a pathetic human. And hey, what could the genie provide if he wanted to feel useful? Apparently a lot.

“Hey,” he went after him, following Zach through the suite, “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Away.”

“You can’t run away from me.”

“Watch me,” Zach turned to the main door to the suite, opened it, and slammed it behind him.

Chris jogged after, yanking it open to see nothing but a housekeeper pushing a cart down the hallway, staring over her shoulder with fear in her eyes and her hand over her heart.

“Sorry, I just… thought I lost something,” Chris apologized, shutting the door quietly. He turned back at the room, surveying it as he crossed his arms over his chest and chewed his lip.

“Neat trick,” he said to the room at large. “I know you’re still here. There are rules, aren’t there?” He jogged back into the ensuite, grabbing his bag and the bottle hidden carefully within it, stroking his thumb across it with a breath of a laugh, “Yeah, of course you wouldn’t hide in here. Why would you go to the one place you hate the most?”

He considered how Zach had dealt during the few times in all these years when he was dating someone, how he’d make himself scarce but with a fair amount of eyerolling and pouting, if he was out of the bottle at all. Chris hadn’t exactly kept his promise about not leaving him in there. Sometimes he just got distracted and forgot.

Maybe he had a right to be pissy. Chris was his only company too. When Chris was single, they’d spent most of the spare time he had together, talking about everything and nothing, and when he dated, Zach was sidelined. And when each and every relationship went south, he was always right there, waiting for Chris to let him out.

Hell, if he really thought about it, this was easily the closest, most intimate relationship he’d had, even if it was some convoluted magical contract that should only exist in fairytales. Zach was as real to him as anyone, and knew him better on top of it. Maybe Zach could give him what he wanted after all. 

“Hey Zach,” he leered to the room at large, “You have to come out! I’m ready to make my second wish! Wait till you hear it, Zach, it’s a doozy. I wanna do something few people in this world have ever done. Or hell, maybe it’s more common than I think it is, I’m just a stupid pathetic human.” 

He flopped back onto the swanky hotel bed, wriggling around in the plush pillows, getting comfortable and dropping his hand to his crotch. “Zach! My second wish is to fuck a genie!”

Zach condensed into being at the foot of the bed immediately, his expression thunderous. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Nothing, man, I’m horny,” Chris got up on his knees on the mattress, feeling powerful and reckless. He reached for his belt, pulling it apart, “So grant my wish.”

Zach’s eyes dropped down to Chris’ hands as he unzipped his fly, then up to tug his sweater over his head. “You’re delusional,” he sneered.

“Am I?” Chris goaded, pushing his hand down under his briefs to pull his dick out, letting it jut from his fly as he tugged it to hardness, helped by Zach’s eyes on him. “Come on, is it such a damn hardship? You’ve fucked humans before, horrible ones. Why not me?”

Zach’s mouth twitched, jaw clenching, nostrils flaring. “This isn’t—You haven’t—”

“What? _What_ , Zach?” Chris asked, still jerking his cock, “It’s not what I want? I haven’t thought this through? I have, though. I told you what I wanted. Someone who knows me better than anyone else, right? Here’s the thing, Zach. We’ve been together for years. We’re regular roomies, you and me. Who knows me better than you? Who knows me inside and out? Every thought in my simple little brain? Come on, what’s keeping you from getting me over with?”

“You know what,” he snarled back.

“I do know what. I’m your Master. I make my wishes, and you have to grant them. I want you to fuck me. I wish to be fucked by you. Is that clear enough? Or do I have to make it more official?”

The skin on Zach’s arms crawled with a glow of heat, the hairs singing off and growing right back as his chest rose and fell, teeth bared and breathing hard through his nose.

“Am I getting to you?” Chris kneed his way closer to foot of the bed, getting himself level with Zach’s face, inches between them. He could feel the heat radiating off the Djinn, reminding him again that this thing really wasn’t human. Still, it drove him on. “Are you all… hot and bothered?”

The Djinn snarled, the very air around him shimmering.

“You can’t refuse, you know. This is about my desire, Zach. My wish,” Chris said, letting his hand squeeze at the base of his shaft and then lifting his fingers and gently lay them on Zach’s scalding chest, where his manifested shirt had burned away. “Are you unattainable? Do you not want me?”

Before he knew it, Chris was thrown bodily backward on the mattress. His breath whooshed out as he landed, hard cock slapping his belly. 

The Djinn prowled at the foot of the bed, like a predator figuring out how exactly how it wanted to take down a cornered meal. His flesh kept sizzling, as if it was an ordeal just to maintain this human form. “What would your mother think?”

Chris threw his head back and laughed, “She’d have me committed. Really, Zach? Bringing up my mom right now?”

“Well, someone should take you down a notch,” Zach growled, “I’ll hurt you.”

“You haven’t burned down a building yet,” Chris taunted, “You won’t hurt me, unless I want you to. But you know exactly what I want and how I want it, don’t you?” He tapped two fingers on the side of his temple to illustrate. “You’re in my head.”

“This will have consequences.”

Chris sighed, letting his head fall back to look at him from under hooded eyelids, slipping a hand down to his cock again, “Yeah, I just bet it will.”

“They will not be good,” Zach placed his fingertips on the bed.

He nodded, “But they won’t all be bad, will they?” He brought both hands up, tucking them under the pillow in supplication. “Grant my wish, Zach. You know what’s in my head. Give me what I wish for. Take what you want.”

Zach slithered up over him, an otherworldly creature, an incubus whose entire purpose was to arouse, his scalding breath making Chris’ skin go dry and taut. His eyes burned black as embers, “This isn’t about what I want.”

“Isn’t it?” Chris goaded, “You have Free Will, Zach. They can’t take your desires away. They can’t stop me from letting you act on them. I wish for it. So do it.”

They faced off for several seconds, until Chris let his head drop to the pillows and breathed, “Please.”

“You are infuriating,” Zach snarled, straddled over him. He raised his hands, hovering over Chris’ face, down to his chest without touching, before he dropped them away. “I don’t know where to begin.”

“Been awhile?” he giggled, though seeing Zach anything close to at a loss was fascinating. 

Zach lifted his hand again, one finger delicately tracing Chris’ jaw and down his neck, surprisingly gentle. “You wish for me to act on my own desires,” he said, “But you don’t know what you ask. I can’t do this as I would in my true form.”

“You chose this body for me, before we even spoke to each other,” Chris wondered, reaching up to touch the soft chest hair in front of him, “This is my unconscious desire, you said. You know that I like both… why not change form every day?”

“Because you don’t change every day,” Zach explained, “You would not ask a human to change their form to accomodate you. That is their choice.”

Chris nodded; that was true. He lifted his hand to the genie’s face; strong jawed and stubbly, the way he liked. In the ten years they’d been together, they so rarely touched that every time he was surprised at the weighted reality of him.

“You also feel shame for your desire of men. Though, not so much as when we first met,” Zach brushed hot fingers down his chest, playing over his nipples.

Chris sighed, because that was also true. When he slept with men, he still had to be discreet because of work and contracts and expectation. Even now he played pronouns and hankies and leaned on that rule whenever he could, because he hated it. God forbid one of the fabled Hollywood Chrises—blond blue-eyed bastions of all things wholesome and appropriate—turned out to be queer.

“I feel your wish that it was different,” Zach told him, bringing his hand up to cover Chris’ own on his cheek, “Why don’t you ask me to make it so?”

Chris exhaled in his frustration, “I want to believe the world can change on its own,” he muttered, “I want to hope people can stop being assholes to each other.”

“The world will always have prejudice,” Zach hmphed, That’s your balance, Christopher.”

“Does yours?”

“What do you think?”

“Well, are there gay genies?”

Zach shook his head at him as he would a child’s questions. “We’re fire. You’re clay.”

He laughed. Zach was always so good at answering in riddles. “Would I be less attracted to you in your true form?” he asked. “Show me.”

“You fear me,” dismissed the genie, “As I truly am.”

“I’ve barely seen you that way,” he argued, “I know you now. I want to know you.”

Zach regarded him, his expression oddly apprehensive, but then he began to transform. Again, like that first time, the human skin burned away, in its place the shape of a man formed of blue flame or smoke or ash, eyes glowing white hot and hair flickering strands of fire and smoke. He was somehow made of light and darkness at once, the way a flame glowed and pulled at the cold darkness surrounding it.

Chris wasn’t afraid now, just awed and curious. “This is really you?” he murmured.

“As true as I can be and remain close to you,” Djinn said. His voice was different, still recognizable, but somehow deeper, more resonant and musical. His hands returned to Chris’ chest, making him gasp at the strange prickling sensation of heat, fingers that felt solid but evanescent. “Your kind are so fragile. So easy to break and burn.”

“Can you stay like this?” he whispered, “When we…”

“You cannot fathom what you ask. You are clay. When clay meets fire, its fate is sealed.”

“How do your people do it?”

“It is alchemy. The transmutation and exaltation of bodies and souls into one being.”

 _Do it,_ he thought wildly, _I want that._

“Be careful, Christopher,” the Djinn growled, seeming to grow bigger and envelope him entirely. 

“Take what you want,” Chris said again, wishing desperately to give himself up to whatever the Djinn wanted, to feel captured and owned and fulfilled.

The Djinn gave a noise of disbelief and descended on him. It felt like he was everywhere, and maybe he was. His mouth felt like whiskey, liquid fire, tasting and biting, drawing moans from Chris’ throat. His hands clamped his wrists like iron, incomprehensibly strong. He dared to watch as flames licked up along his thighs, making him sweat and tremble under those fiery eyes.

When the Djinn entered him, it felt real enough, thick and hot, that full, consuming, pleasurable pain he so desperately needed to lose himself in. Watching through stinging eyes, he marveled at the being within and above him, so otherworldly and yet so very familiar.

He felt transcended, riding the ebb and flow as the genie fucked him. He lost himself in it as it went on and on, floating as the heat and friction drew him tighter and closer. He felt like he might burn up, he might leave his body and amalgamate into flame.

He vaguely heard his name whispered from all sides and inside his head. _You must let go. Come, Christopher._

And then he was back, crying out and coming untouched. His cock jerked and spilled over his chest and belly, his lungs bursting for air. On opening his eyes, the Djinn was simply Zach again, rolling to the side, calm and collected as Chris shuddered and shook through his aftershocks and came down, covered in his own come and sweat.

Zach simply waved the mess away, rising from the bed. Chris’ eyes followed as he strode across the room to the bar, unconcernedly nude in his human skin to retrieve a bottle of water from the mini-fridge, which he brought back to the bed. Only then did Chris realize how parched he felt, twisting off the cap and swallowing half of it at once.

“I forget how much water is involved in human copulation,” said Zach with a moue of disgust, “I try to take moisture from the air, but your strange bodies just leak with this kind of activity.”

“What,” Chris smiled, still catching his breath, “You couldn’t have just magicked some lube into existence?”

Zach rolled his eyes, “Magic is a fancy word for science, you know. Everything has to come from something. In this case most of it came from you.”

“I’m still gonna be feeling that tomorrow,” Chris murmured, stretching and wincing a little.

“Yeah, well,” Zach settled back on the bed beside him, “You know my dick is made of fire, there’s only so much I can do about it.”

Chris shut his eyes and laughed. It had been great, fantastic, everything he’d wished for and needed. Except for the part where, just as always, those empty feelings coming right back. Zach could indeed give him what he’d desired in the moment, even the most intense blinding pleasure, the best sex he’d ever had. But it was still a temporary fix, a distraction.

“This wasn’t against the rules, was it?” Chris asked, “I mean, you said you’ve done it before.”

The genie lay with his arms relaxed on the pillows above his head, eyes narrowing at the ceiling. “I was never told otherwise. But it’s not like anyone has ever come back around to check on me, eternal exile being what it is.”

“You never did tell me why, you know,” Chris wondered. “What you did to get imprisoned.”

“I told you before, I committed a crime.”

“I know that,” he said, “You’ve never told me what it was.”

“I told you that you could coerce me to do it again.”

Chris rolled to his side, propping his head on his hand, “You’ve known me for years now, do you really think I’d do that?”

“Humans will say anything if it serves them. You make promises you don’t intend to keep. You say one thing and do another. To get what you want, you lie. You even make a profession of it,” Zach gave him a pointed look, “Acting. Pretending to be someone you’re not. You complain of people not wanting the real you, and yet this is how you make your living, convincing them so thoroughly of lies that they can’t see who you really are.”

Chris was struck dumb. Because it was true, wasn’t it? He pretended for a living, and it contributed to people believing he was somehow like the characters he played. And he was convincing enough. Hell, he’d wished for this talent, he’d wished for the ability to lie so well, that many people believed he was really like the roguish Captain Kirk, or the impossibly ‘above average’ Steve Trevor. He’d asked Zach to do this. He’d made him good at what he did. But he certainly didn’t make him a good person over all. Case in point: tonight’s wish. Used and gone on what was very likely a one-off.

He rolled over to face the wall. He didn’t want to think about the idea that he’d forced Zach to do something he didn’t really want to do. Forced him to do this, jesus. What a piece of shit he was.

He heard the genie let go a heavy sigh. “There is a rule, one that I didn’t tell you at the beginning.”

He turned back again. “Why not?”

“Because, strictly speaking, you aren’t supposed to know.”

“And…? Are you going to elaborate or do I have to guess?”

“When I was an observer, I was assigned to a man for period of time,” Zach collected himself, searching for his words. “He was influential, he had potential to move your civilization far ahead of where it was. I… revealed myself to him, I spoke to him, I got to know him. And I—naively—gave him something he desired, something I thought would help him achieve the greatness I saw there.”

“What?” asked Chris.

“The problem with your kind,” the genie continued bitterly, “is that you never let go of your petty human vices of greed and avarice and revenge. And you’ll do anything to get what you want. I gave this man what no human is equipped to possess.”

“Zach,” Chris stared at him nervously. “What do you mean? What did you give him?”

“What do you think?” Zach’s eyes slid over to him angrily, “I gave him my knowledge. And with it the power to manipulate the universe as I can. I made him Djinn.”

Chris’ eyes widened, “You can do that?”

“I shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have interfered at all,” he sighed dejectedly. “We’re supposed to observe, grant desires, but never, ever reveal ourselves.”

“But… you did with me. I know what you are; you told me right off the bat.”

“Because I’m banished,” he explained. “Because my purpose had changed from observance to servitude. I have no other choice but to interact directly now. Otherwise, we just observe how your desires move you, and grant them anonymously.”

“So you’re saying that everything we’ve done, in all our history, has all been because of you? Wars, and… and the H-bomb and the rise and fall of civilizations has all been because of _you_?”

“Well, not me personally. I only fucked up one civilization, but you can see where that got me.”

Chris sat up and stared at him. “You gave somebody your same powers and they… what happened? When did this happen? What civilization?”

“It doesn’t matter,” muttered Zach, “It was thousands of years ago, a civilization you will never have heard of because he vaporized every trace of it from the earth.”

“He what?” Chris was baffled. “This guy killed his own people?”

“By his reasoning, they weren’t his people anymore. He was more, stronger, better. He wanted to rule the entire world as a god, but his people refused to submit to his new order. He took offense.”

“Wait, and you took the hit for it? This guy got power and destroyed a bunch of people and changed the course of our entire history, probably… but they put you in prison for all eternity for it? Why would you give him that kind of power in the first place? You get into people’s heads, how did you not see he was like that?”

“I get into people’s heads, but I don’t stay there indefinitely if I can help it,” The genie gave a betrayed huff as he sat up, “He was charismatic. Intelligent in ways I had never seen in your kind. He could have advanced your people centuries ahead of where you were. And he was persuasive. He knew how to appeal to… my weakness. I was young then, so young and naive and stupid.”

“But why didn’t he vouch for you afterwards? To your people, to the Djinn? If he knew about you guys, why didn’t he tell them what he did?”

“They saw it all anyway, they saw what he did with it,” Zach grumbled, “He got what he wanted. He didn’t need me anymore.”

“What an asshole,” Chris snorted, wrapping his mind around this. “And this was all before you were stuck granting wishes as penance, you didn’t even have to….” he stopped, watching the genie fidget, and finally put it all together. “You were in love with him.”

No answer was answer enough. Zach avoided his gaze on the side of his face as adamantly as he could. 

Chris gave a low whistle. “Wow.”

“I committed a crime. Not only did I reveal myself and give a human far more than any human deserved, but I fell in love with a Water-Borne. A sin so vile, that when he showed his true intentions and murdered his own people, mine turned their backs on me and my disgusting proclivities,” Zach laughed humorlessly, “Great story, huh?”

“Not really,” Chris said. “But I get it.”

“Why the hell do you get it?” Zach sputtered, “I made an idiotic misjudgment, I gave a psychopath the knowledge of the universe, hoping we would be together, and the first thing he did was use it against me. And because of that, I am condemned to suffer for all eternity, all because I… I wanted to be loved.”

“What happened to him?” asked Chris, “Didn’t he get punished too? He wiped out a whole civilization, he didn’t get away with it, right?”

“I don’t know,” Zach muttered. “I’ll never know.”

“Do you still love him?”

“I _hate_ him,” he snarled viciously, “But… I still want what he promised me.” Pulling up his knees, Zach pressed his face into his forearm, “I deserve my punishment. I deserve all my suffering. I’m pathetic.”

"Hey,” Chris reached for his arm, “No, you’re not, you don’t. People will do anything for love, stupid things, sometimes. It’s blinding, it’s everything. Jesus, I could only wish—” he stopped short of completing that thought.

“You wish to be loved, for everything you are and everything you’re not?” the genie finished for him, then breathed a laugh, “I can’t give you that, you know I can’t. And anyway, there are millions out there already who adore you. That’s for free, don’t discount it just because it’s not the right kind.”

Chris sighed, nodding pensively. “He must have been punished too. Maybe he got the the same punishment as you,” he said, trying for something comforting.

“For the sake of all your kind, I truly hope not,” Zach replied, looking back at him with sincerity. “Love is easy, Chris. The difficulty you have is reciprocation. You wish to be loved even with all your faults and failures, for the true, honest portrayal of yourself. For you, it could be so simple. You’re handsome and successful and as good-hearted and kind as a human can possibly be, but you’re selfish. You refuse to let anyone in past your safety nets. What you want is unattainable until you’re willing to give it back in full. You have to be willing to sacrifice your self-importance, your solitude, and your fear. I should know, those things are all I have left.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loopholes.

Things had changed. It took awhile for him to pinpoint exactly how or why, but something about his and the genie’s relationship had definitely reconfigured since that night on the opposite side of the world. It wasn’t bad, exactly, just… different. Maybe it was just on Chris’ end. 

For awhile he felt stupid, using up a valuable wish for something that had been temporary. The regret set in like a heavy stone in his gut. He wondered if the genie privately judged him for it, or if he was even aware of how discombobulated Chris felt. Or maybe Zach didn’t care at all, just like with any other questionable decision Chris had made. If Zach knew what was in his head, he must know all this shit that was spinning around in it. He’d left Zach in the bottle for the rest of the press tour, unable to look him in the eye.

But now that he was back at home for a couple of well-earned months off, he had taken to covertly observing the genie himself. It was strange now, reconciling the cool, haughty, often pretentious human-looking genie he saw day-in and day-out from the wild, incandescent and sensuous Djinn that had taken him to pieces in bed.

He watched Zach make himself comfortable on the sofa with the tv remote, an episode of Real Housewives of Somewhere and a GQ magazine while he faffed around in the kitchen, tossing food from the fridge that had spoiled while he was away and trying to settle back into his space.

Most of the time after Chris had been gone for a while, Wednesday stuck to him like velcro after he’d collected her from his sister’s place, like if she took her eyes off him he might go away again. He’d gone to pick her up this morning, after getting in late last night and resolving to stay up until evening to combat the jetlag.

Usually at this point, he couldn’t even take a piss without hearing her nudge the bathroom door open behind him. Now she’d stationed herself beside the sofa where Zach was, sitting alert. She’d always been a cautious, watchful dog, only giving a few small, short little _borfs_ if she heard or saw something irregular. At the shelter, she and her siblings had been especially quiet in a kennel full of noisy dogs. Instead, she talked with her ears and her expressive hazel eyes.

Now he watched as Zach turned a page of the magazine, and her head tilted at it, ears perking, before looking back over at him.

“Can she see you?” he asked, because it sure as shit seemed like she could. He honestly couldn’t remember if she’d ever done this before today.

“No,” answered Zach.

“When I was little, my sister had a cat that used to see shit that wasn’t there all the time,” he remembered. “Are you, you know, doing the thing with that magazine? Making it disappear?”

“Yes.”

He walked over, watching his dog. She wagged as he approached and he patted her head as he went to his armchair. Wednesday followed to plonk her butt on his feet. Normally she'd face him, put her big head on his knee for pets and cheek squishies, but this time she sat facing out looking over at the sofa, at Zach.

“I think you’re wrong,” he decided.

Zach raised an eyebrow, looking up over the edge of the magazine.

“Can you get in her head?”

“What? No,” said the genie, affronted, “She’s a dog.”

“I’m both you’re Masters,” Chris grinned, idly scratching her velvety ears, “What do you think, babe, you know about Zach, don’t you? Dogs are way more intelligent than people give them credit for, you know.”

“I suppose,” Zach muttered at whatever article he was reading, “You’re not that far apart, evolutionarily speaking.”

“Thanks, asshole,” Chris snorted, looking between his dog and the genie again, “Hey, go somewhere else in the house real quick.”

“But Dorinda and Tinsley are fighting and I haven’t seen this one!” he whined, gesturing at the television.

“Come on, you can watch that shit whenever, just humor me for a minute.”

Zach rolled his eyes with a snotty huff and promptly vanished. Wednesday’s ears perked up.

“Hey Winnie,” she looked back at him over her shoulder, “Where’s Zach, huh? Go find him!”

 _Go find_ was something he’d spent awhile teaching her, throwing a ball or her rubber pool toy back behind the bushes, or hiding it somewhere in the house. It was a favorite game to play. She promptly went to the couch, sniffing at it, and then once around for good measure before she turned to the stairs and ran up. Chris quickly followed.

She went first to Chris’ bedroom, sniffing into the closet where his suitcase lay open and halfway unpacked, and then to his bathroom, where the bottle sat with his shaving kit. Sniffing at the sink top for a moment, she dropped her nose back to the floor and headed out to the hall and into the second guest bedroom.

She tipped her head back and forth and let out a sharp bark, and Zach poofed back into view.

“She can’t see me,” Zach said defensively, “I don’t know, maybe she just notices atmospheric changes or whatever.”

“Found you, though,” Chris knelt down to squish her cheeks and praise her, “That’s my girl!”

The dog was great for unconditional love and companionship, for sure. She was snuggly and sweet and he hoped she liked him, even if he was away for long periods of time. He could talk to her and cuddle and not expect anything but love in return. But he’d had Zach for much longer than he’d had the dog.

Chris was finally beginning to realize the things he wished for the most were things the genie was never going to be able to provide. This loneliness he felt, despite having a multitude of friends, plenty of sexual partners at his beck and call, a great family and a dog, this need for something else—they weren’t things he could wish for. They were against the rules, Zach had made that clear. He had drilled it in to him for years; every wish wasn’t simply instant gratification. Every action had a consequence, good or bad. Plus, it was hard to wish for something when you couldn’t really pin down what exactly it was that you were looking for in the first place.

It wasn’t like Chris hadn’t had fulfilling relationships. He had been in love plenty of times, with plenty of people. Falling in love was really easy, staying in love was the hard part. There was always something that didn’t work out. His schedule or his partner’s schedule being the prime issue these days, along with their friends or publicists piggybacking on his fame and accelerating things, that stupid DUI. He’d always tried to make things work out, but they just… didn’t. And yeah, maybe the genie was right, maybe part of it was that he was selfish, and afraid.

He thought about that night in Shanghai a lot. Not just about the amazing sex or how astonishing the real Djinn was, but also about what they had discussed afterwards, what Zach had confessed about his past. 

Nothing about his punishment was fair. What sort of higher species dealt such cruel sentences? Yeah, Zach had messed up his job to a loss of a civilization, but that was on the asshole who did it, wasn’t it? Or was the responsibility Zach’s because he was supposedly the more advanced species? Or was it conflated with xenophobia, if a bird loves a fish, or whatever? Clearly Djinn had bigotry problems in their world too.

Plus, the genie could say all that stuff about what it was to really love, even after having been horribly betrayed by someone he’d loved however many centuries ago. It was no wonder, really, that he was so bitter and blistering most of the time.

But not always. Sometimes he didn’t patronize or demean at all. There were times when he was gentle, when he let Chris stand a little closer when it was chilly, when he listened to his insecurities and didn’t minimize them. He understood pain and loneliness and grief profoundly. He’d made mistakes he’d paid for a thousand times over. Hell, even in the middle of that wild night, giving Chris the fuck of his life, he’d never once hurt him.

No, he didn’t regret that wish after all. He had gotten what he needed that night, both physically and otherwise. He’d needed a turning point. He’d needed to prioritize and look at things through a different lens.

With Zach, he could sit and discuss some niche intellectual bullshit with a person who actually understood it, or he could sit with him in total silence for hours and be unbothered by the company. Zach provided healthy checks when his ego got the better of him and yanked him up with a sassy remark when he started wallowing in a navel gazing cycle of self-doubt. They'd spent a decade and then some together, since that fateful trip to a flea market on a boiling hot summer day. Maybe Chris had been looking for what he needed in the wrong places. Maybe it wasn’t a ‘need’, but rather a ‘want’. A desire.

And that brought him around to thinking about his final wish.

He only had one more. He’d used two: one wish to make his entire life what it was today, and the next on something entirely impulsive, now just a memory. There was only one wish left, and then Zach wouldn’t be beholden to him at all. He’d have a new Master at some point, probably. Even if Chris held tight to the bottle for the rest of his life, once that last wish was gone, Zach wouldn’t even have to come out and talk to him. Maybe he wouldn’t want to. Maybe he wouldn’t even be able to. Once his three wishes were fulfilled, the contract was over. 

Unless Chris did something about it.

He didn’t even know if it would work. Disney movies tended to be sanitized versions of fairytales, after all. In all the versions of the genie story he had been able to find over the years, none of them were remotely like the movie. It was the only one, in fact, that even brought it up. Even that version didn’t specify why the genie had been a prisoner of the lamp in the first place. Chris had never been bothered by that particular plot hole as a kid. 

And as far as he knew, the amiable genie was freed and retained his magic abilities and had a whole new television series and no one questioned his magical blueness. Chances were, that’s not the way it would work in the real world. Heh, in his real world, where his best friend was actually a sassy fire spirit from another dimension. It was a good thing Chris regularly hung around with space aliens and superhero goddesses and often traveled back in time to be a prince or a king.

Why, after all, would anyone ever consider wishing to free a genie? Humans were greedy, just like Zach said. Even Chris hadn't entertained the idea in the last several years.

But wasn't it the right thing to do? He didn’t need anything else. He’d made his first wish, which essentially set him up for a long, stable, well-paid career. As long as he played his cards right, he could do it his whole life just like his dad, or if not, he should have enough put away and smartly invested for a nice retirement. He had a fantastic life, for which he was grateful. He had everything he needed, and Zach was the one who gave it to him. He wanted to return the favor. And he might be the only person who would actually do it.

He found Zach preening in the mirror of his master bathroom that evening, fussing with the cuffs of a different shirt, probably another he’d seen on the pages of that magazine. Chris pushed his hands into his pockets and propped himself in the doorway to watch, fondly amused that Zach still changed his look sometimes three times in a day.

“What are you looking at?” Zach’s eyes met his in the reflection, “Is this outfit too much? Too little?”

“I dunno,” Chris shook his head, not really caring what Zach decided to wear. It’s not like anyone but Chris was going to see. Or maybe that was the reason.

Zach eyed him warily, “Why are you so quiet?”

“I’m not saying anything.”

“No, you’re quiet,” Zach turned around, explaining with a wave of his hand, “In your head.”

“Hm,” Chris acknowledged, “I’ve been thinking a lot.”

“I know. You never stop thinking,” he frowned, “But now you’re… really quiet.”

Chris turned around and crossed the room to pick up the bottle from his nightstand, sitting on the edge of his bed and watching the genie carefully, “I think I’m ready to make my last wish.”

For a moment Zach looked startled, his lips dropping open and eyes widening slightly. He inhaled audibly, looking around the room before crossing his arms, standing casually in the doorway with feigned nonchalance. “Okay. What is it?”

Chris shook his head with amusement, “Jesus. You won't even admit it.”

“Admit what?”

“That you don’t want this to end!” he smirked, pointing a finger at him, “That you’d miss this!”

Zach rolled his eyes, “Give me a fucking break, Pine.”

“What?” Chris dove in, holding the bottle out, “Do you want to go back in here for an undetermined amount of time? Cause I’m pretty sure that’s what happens. Am I right?”

Zach’s eyes cut to the bottle and back, “You know I don’t want that.”

“Why not?”

“Because!” the genie fired back, “It’s a prison that fucking sucks!”

“And?” pressed Chris.

“And I never have any idea how long it will be until the next time I get out of there!”

“And?”

“And what?”

Chris set the bottle back down and stood up, grinning and spreading his arms. “You’d miss me.”

“That’s not—” Zach tsked, “Stop being ridiculous. You’re tired and it’s making you stupid.”

“You’d miss this,” he continued, “You’d miss berating me and sassing my life choices.”

“No I wouldn’t.”

“You totally would.”

Zach groaned, thrusting out his arms, “Do you know how long I spend with the average human?”

“Enlighten me,” Chris smiled, settling back.

“A day, maybe a week at the most,” replied Zach, “Most of these stupid little people rattle off that they want a million dollars and a vacation and a fuck and I’m done in a couple of hours, but you,” He jabbed his finger at Chris, “You had to sit and spend ten years ruminating over the most piddly little things while I sat here waiting for you to get on with it.”

“I did,” he confessed, “It’s a terrible character trait, I know. I’m hopelessly indecisive.”

“Exactly, you’re indecisive and fucking impulsive at the same time, and I have to babysit while you make your silly movies and jetset around in your pajamas and hopelessly flounder around with people who are never going to work for you. Loopholes, Chris. There are so many.”

Chris’ smile only widened as he watched his genie rave on, “Tons of loopholes. I bet I miss every one.”

“Right,” sighed Zach, “It's fine, as long as you aren’t distracted by the next shiny object or pair of tits walking by, but jesus, you’re so difficult sometimes. Ten years.”

“Ten great years, and then some, you’ve spent,” said Chris. “In my delightful company.”

“I didn’t know your ego had blown up this much,” Zach snarled back. “Go to sleep, Christopher. You’re jet lagged off your ass.”

“You could make me sleep, if you really wanted me to.”

“Yeah, see, Free Will, though,” Zach remarked, “I’m not really into forcing people to do things.”

“Then you could suggest it. With your powers of suggestion.”

“Then I suggest maybe you go to sleep.”

“Nah, I’m good,” Chris folded his arms again, sitting on the bed defiantly.

“Then maybe you should go for a swim and cool off.”

“I don’t wanna cool off,” Chris wrinkled his nose and shook his head, “Turns out I like the heat.”

Zach fumed, almost literally, pacing back and forth. “So are you going to make a wish or not? It doesn’t make any difference to me.”

“Yeah it does,” Chris said, “You don’t want to admit it, but it does. You don’t want me to make my wish because then we’re done.”

“You’re a nightmare.”

“Probably. But I get it, man, I do. You probably hate the idea of not knowing what would happen to me. It would be like you lost your puppy or something, right?”

“No,” Zach insisted, a bit too strongly.

“I hate the idea of not knowing what would happen to you, too,” Chris winked at him.

“How sweet of you,” Zach snarled.

“You’d miss me, and I’d miss you back.”

“Make your wish, Christopher. Get it over with.”

“Fine. I will. You know, the way things are right now, I don’t really think the world needs a wild card, shit’s way too unpredictable as it is.”

“Seems like a simple enough fix,” said the genie.

Chris nodded definitively, “That’s why I’m wishing you free.”

Zach physically staggered, shaking his head as if he didn’t hear. “What?”

“You’re free, Zach.”

“You can’t—” the genie stopped talking, and then he stopped breathing, eyes gone wide. Then he lurched, collapsing to his knees with a shocked wheeze, his body seizing up.

“Zach?” Chris jumped forward to catch him, maneuvering him down to the floor to turn him back to front between his own knees, trying to keep him from hurting himself. 

Zach made a horrible noise as he thrashed. Waves of embers skated over his skin, his manifested clothes burning to ash and scorching Chris in the process. He hissed and clenched his teeth at the pain, but he didn’t let go.

Gradually, Zach’s wails quieted to whimpers and shivers. His breath came rapidly, lashes fluttering, his eyes glassy and staring.

“Are you okay?”

“C-c-c-cold,” he stuttered, his body trying to curl up in a fetal position. “W-w-hy’s it s-ss-so c-c-cold?”

“It’s not,” Chris shushed, gathering him tight in his arms and feeling the difference. Zach’s skin was no longer the dry, searing heat he’d come to know if he touched him. He’d started to sweat, tiny beads oozing up through his skin, like a high fever had just broken. Chris choked on a laugh, “You’re a cool 98.6 degrees.”

“What does that mean?” Zach blinked, touching the tears streaming from his eyes. “Ugh, I’m wet! I feel wet everywhere, what the fuck? Ew, why am I wet?”

A lump welling up in his throat, Chris tried to keep his words steady, “Shh, you’re okay, I promise.”

“I’m not okay, I’m wet!”

As Zach tried to flick the moisture from his arms, the chains binding him disintegrated, smearing like ash from his hairy wrists.

Sniveling through tears of his own, Chris reached awkwardly to pull the comforter down from the bed and tuck it around Zach, leaning back against the side of the mattress. “You’ll be okay. Just give it time. It’s okay.”

Zach burrowed under the warmth and against Chris’ body, shivering and complaining. “What happened to me?”

Chris looked down at the top of his head, petting the hair there, damp at the roots. “I made a wish, Zach,” he whispered.

“Why?” Zach frowned, brows pulling together. “I don’t remember. That’s not right,” he stopped, a stricken look of horror twisting his face. “Oh my god, what did you do?”

“I think,” Chris held him tighter, “I think I made you a human.”

“Oh god, I hate you.”

He closed his eyes and murmured into Zach’s hair, “I really hope you don’t mean that. I’d rather history didn’t repeat itself, you know?”

“What?”

“Look,” Chris told him, pulling Zach’s wrists into his sight line, where there were no chains now. Zach’s hands flew to them, wringing the bones until his clammy skin turned pink. His eyes searched frantically then, until Chris turned and picked up the bottle again. Zach flinched back from it reflexively.

Chris turned to murmur in his ear, “Go inside the bottle, Zach.”

“No,” Zach gasped, “No! I don't want to go! No!” He devolved into tears, curling against Chris, sobbing the words over and over again. Chris held him tight, stroking his hair and arms, murmuring nonsense.

When he’d cried himself dry, Zach lifted himself to sit up. Chris held the bottle out to him. Zach hesitated, but he dared to brush his fingers against the crystal. When nothing happened, he gingerly took it in his hand. It was nothing now. Just an old, dirty, useless bottle.

He dropped it on the carpet. “I don’t… I don’t know what… I don’t understand. I feel weird.”

“I know,” Chris said, “I know, you have to be feeling really fucked up right now.” He climbed up off the floor and took Zach by the shoulders, “Can you stand?”

“Of course I can— _oh fuck_ ,” Zach said as he made it upright and promptly wobbled, reaching up to his head. “What is that?”

“What?” Chris tried to steady him.

“All this—” Zach flapped his arms vaguely around his head and everywhere else. “Why is it so much… pressure on me?”

“Pressure?” Chris smiled through a laugh, “That’s… I think that’s gravity. You’re like fire, right, so you’re used to going up, but like, in reality gravity pulls down…” his pseudo-science was probably failing him entirely. “Here, just come lay down.”

“Oh god, why is everything _moving_ inside?”

“That’s… it does that. It’s normal.” He maneuvered Zach carefully down onto his bed, grabbing the duvet from the floor and throw it over Zach’s naked body and arrange it around him. He took a couple of shaky breaths and climbed up on the other side of the mattress. “Better?”

“I don’t know,” Zach murmured, his eyes a little droopy, “Everything feels weird.”

“Okay,” he fussed with the blanket again, unsure of what to do or how to help. “Okay, let’s just… just rest a bit.”

Zach’s eyes closed, his breaths growing slower, his pinched face beginning to relax and go slack. As Chris watched over him, he relived the last few minutes over and over: the way Zach had fallen, the way—if he really thought about it—it was like seismic ripple, like something huge had torn unseen layers in space and time, like a chunk of an iceberg had fallen in slow motion as Zach had hit the floor. Chris had done this powerful thing. This was far beyond wishing for fame or a great lay or anything else petty and human. He’d freed a genie.

Not a genie… not anymore. He reached out carefully, touching the long strands of hair tousled on the pillow, now totally uncoiffed and overgrown, the clammy skin of his forehead, the way his body quaked and shivered occasionally beneath the covers in fitful sleep.

Over the edge of the bed, a pair of soft ears appeared, then a little face as Wednesday popped up, cautiously placing her feet on the edge of the mattress, to stare intently at this usurper in their space. She sniffed carefully and made a small whine in her throat.

“Shhh,” he whispered, snapping his fingers to get her to come around to the other side, where she could hop up and not disturb him. “See? It’s only Zach. He’s been here all the time, just like always. Now he’s real… now he’s really here.”

She cocked her head, sniffing and then lay down with her head on his knee to keep watch.

The dog could accept so readily, whatever the reality was of her and the previously invisible being in her house. But Chris sat staring, his heart pounding in his chest. He’d perpetrated this. He’d carried out some kind of voodoo prison break, without really knowing what the outcome could possibly be, and now he had Zach, his all-powerful genie, confused and unconscious and vulnerable and _human_. He wondered if they—the Djinn—were paying some FBI style attention to him now.

Was this against their rules? Were they going to do something to him? Would they do something to Zach? Fuck that, they’d done more than enough to him, and he’d been through hell paying for it for millennia.

He stretched out beside him, putting his arm over Zach protectively. “I did this,” he whispered, to whomever might be listening. “I’m responsible. You leave him the hell alone.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Only human.

Chris woke to a sudden noise somewhere in his house: a yell, followed by a heavy thump, and then a drawn-out groan and then… eerie silence. 

The sound of Wednesday’s nails galloping up the stairs and skittering on the hardwood of the hallway followed. She flew through the bedroom doorway to the bed, demanding his attention with her trademark soft _borf_. 

“Hmn?” he rolled over and pried his eyes open. He’d slept in his clothes, uncomfortably twisted around him.

His dog jumped to the empty side of the bed, swiping at his face with her big tongue, and yesterday evening came back to him in a rush.

“Zach?” he called, sitting up to scrub at his eyes with fingers and thumb.

A despairing whimper answered and he jumped up, following the dog as she wildly scrambled back out of the room and down to the kitchen.

Where he found Zach curled on the floor, quite naked and clutching his crotch.

“Shit, what happened?” Chris rushed over.

“How the fuck do you people procreate?” he croaked.

“Huh?” 

“Go away, stupid dog,” Zach pushed at Wednesday, who was sniffing curiously at him as he sat up. “She did this.”

Chris blinked, trying to process. “But… she’d never bite anybody!”

“She didn’t,” Zach wheezed, still crouched over his lap, “Just jumped on me.”

“Let me see.”

“I don’t need you to look at it,” Zach jerked away, struggling to his feet like an unsteady toddler. 

Right then, the gate code buzzed a warning from the alarm system. Zach froze at the noise.

“It’s okay,” Chris said, “The only people who have my code are family and friends.”

“They’ve never seen me!” Zach squawked.

“Can they see you?”

“If I’m fucking human now, I assume so?”

“Shit,” Chris ran to the front door to head off whoever it was, but they were already keying the lock.

“Chris!” his sister said as she opened the door, “Damn, I didn’t want to wake you up.”

“It’s fine, I was awake,” he grinned falsely.

“I thought you’d still be dead to the world,” his sister pushed past him, greeting an excitable Wednesday and carrying in a large bundle. “You just forgot Winn’s bed and some of her toys—Oh!” she exclaimed, “You have company!”

Zach was badly hidden, semi-crouched in the kitchen with one of the velour blankets from Chris’ sofa haphazardly draped around him like a toga, looking like a petrified deer in headlights. 

Chris cringed and felt himself blush. Not exactly the first time Katie had caught him with a naked guy, but it had been quite a few years. “Um, Katie, this is Zach,” he mumbled, “Zach, my sister.”

“Oh, yeah, I think he’s mentioned a Zach before, hi,” she nodded politely, winking at her little brother, “Well, don’t mind me, I just wanted to drop this stuff off before I run to work.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Chris agreed, pink-faced, “Thanks, Kay.”

Thankfully, she was gone as fast as she came. Wednesday saw her out and came trotting back to root in the canvas bag of her toys at Chris’ feet.

Zach hobbled out from the kitchen to the sofa, carefully sitting down. He flipped the corner of the blanket open to examine himself, hiding it again as Chris came over.

“So now my sister thinks we’re fucking, that’s great,” he said, flopping to the couch beside him.

“We have. Technically.”

Chris chuckled, “Yeah.”

“I had no idea you humans had such delicate equipment,” Zach said, “It”s astonishing your species proliferates at all.”

“I guess so,” smirked Chris, watching as Wednesday came over to drop a slobbery ball hopefully on Zach’s lap, “Seriously, you’re not like, bleeding or anything?”

“No.”

“She probably just got you in exactly the wrong way; it happens,” Chris said, “Dogs don’t know any better.”

Zach pushed the moist ball off with a look of disgust, which only intensified as he shifted and his naked thighs stuck to the leather sofa with a peeling sound.

Chris chuckled again, “We should get you something to wear, come on.”

Upstairs, he dug through his drawers, picking out a pair of shorts and a t-shirt.

“I’m not wearing that,” said Zach, as the clothes were set on the bed before him.

“Why not?”

“Because,” he scoffed, “Basketball shorts at this time of year? And that shirt…”

“You just got hit in the balls, trust me, you’re gonna want loose quarters down there, okay?” Chris argued, “And there’s nothing wrong with this shirt, I love this shirt.”

“I’m aware. It has a hole in the armpit,” Zach bitched, “It’s had a hole in the armpit for three years. And it’s stained.”

“Well, you have to put on some kind of clothes if I’m going to take you out and buy you some fancy designer crap. People can see you now.”

“And you think I’m going to be seen in that?”

“Jesus fucking christ,” Chris muttered, going back to his closet. He returned with one of his favorite sweaters and some fairly loose jeans, and a pair of underwear that Zach flicked away.

“Fine. Chafe, then, see how you like it,” he said, taking the t-shirt for himself.

He probably ought to have known shopping with Zach would be a trip. At first, he looked blankly to Chris whenever anyone spoke to him directly, but soon his typical brattiness reemerged. The sales people at the sort of high-end shops Zach expected were very attentive, and handsy, suggesting certain cuts or god forbid holding a fabric up to his skin tone or touching him, which he clearly wasn’t used to. 

Zach was annoyed with the idea that he had to try anything on, have his measurements taken and then wait any amount of time for tailoring, because the clothes didn’t simply fit perfectly off the rack. But luckily these Hollywood sales people were used to weird demands and attitudes, and took his eccentricity in stride. Mostly.

“And of course, you’ll need accessories,” one salesman ushered Zach over to their jewelry counter, “You must try this new Rolex, just in, top of the line.”

The man made the mistake of taking Zach’s wrist and attempting to strap on a watch. 

“No!” Zach snatched his arm away, the several thousand dollar watch nearly going flying, “No!”

Chris rushed over, “Yeah, no. He’s… not a big fan of Rolex.”

“Ah, of course not,” the salesman simpered, “Cartier, then, or Breguet?”

“No. No watches,” he apologized, “Attached to his phone, you know? I think were done here, we’ll just check out.”

That Zach was pretty socially awkward might have been expected, given he’d only ever had one person at a time to talk to before. Still, it was a reminder of how absurd Hollywood was that his behavior was just accepted.

The operation of choosing several outfits took them into afternoon, and Chris had forgotten to eat breakfast.

“God, I’m starving,” he complained as they loaded shopping bags into the car.

“Is that what this feeling is in the middle?” Zach asked poking at his stomach, “It’s making gross sounds.”

Chris did a double-take, “Oh my god, you haven’t eaten.”

“Apparently not.”

“No, I mean,” Chris said, a smile spreading on his face, “You’ve _never_ eaten food, have you? Oh my god, just you wait. What do you want?”

Zach narrowed his eyes, “Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters! There’s so many amazing things to choose from!” he exclaimed. “Pizza, pasta, sandwiches, breakfast, bacon! Anything you want!”

Zach kept frowning as they got into the car. “Humans eat so frequently, I imagine I’ll have the opportunity to try them all.”

“Exactly!” Chris grinned. “I want tacos. Do you want tacos?”

Zach shrugged.

“We’re getting tacos.”

At Chris’ go-to taco joint, which was decidedly a non-hollywood Hollywood sort of semi-permanent food truck on a lot near a park, he ordered for the both of them. Zach was less forthcoming about choosing food than he was about clothing. He brought the bags over to one of the tree-shaded picnic tables.

“Okay,” he spread out each of the ten small tacos on the paper between them. “Try this one first. That’s carnitas, this one’s barbacoa, and that’s chicken. Oh, and you gotta squirt on hot sauce and créma, like this.” Chris demonstrated, taking a big bite of the small taco as the sauce dripped down his hands.

Zach wrinkled his nose at the sight. “Looks messy.”

“It is messy,” he answered around his mouthful, licking his fingers, “It’s fantastic. Try it!”

Reluctantly, Zach applied some sauce and took a bite, chewing as Chris eagerly watched and waited.

“My mouth is… tingling,” said Zach, his cheeks flushing from the spiciness.

“Not so fiery anymore, are you?” Chris laughed, “Yeah, take a drink, wash it down.” When he got another look of disgust, he shook his head, twisting the cap off a water bottle, “You have to drink all the time now, Zach, we humans are made of it.”

He finished his own taco, dressing up another as Zach took a drink and meticulously wiped at his fingers with napkins.

“So? What do you think?”

Zach merely shrugged, swallowed and took another taco.

“Sheesh, what does it take for you to get enthusiastic about something?” he lamented.

Back at home, Chris helped Zach to unload everything into the guest room closet and dresser. He tried not to think too much about the discomfiting feeling it put in his stomach, to relegate Zach into a guest room, as if he was a guest. Which of course he was, but at the same time, he never had been. Because in over ten years he’d never thought about it before, where Zach should be sleeping, whenever he did sleep, which he didn’t do in a bed until last night. Occupying a guest room implied impermanence. 

He also had to get Zach some basic toiletries: a toothbrush, hairbrush, a razor—safety and electric—and then show him how to use them, because Zach hadn’t ever done it before.

That also came to explaining showering mechanics once Zach began complaining that he stunk, and the inevitable eventuality of using the toilet. That went over well.

Chris was outside in the yard that evening as the sun set, throwing Wednesday’s ball for her to fetch when Zach had reemerged, freshly washed and dressed in his new pajamas, scowling.

“What’s up?” Chris asked. “Why so grumpy? I think you had a pretty decent first day as a human. Minus the… painful morning.”

Zach seemingly didn’t agree, standing on the patio with his arms crossed and shoulders hunched. 

“I used to speak 10,000 languages, now I only comprehend one,” he muttered, “I was naturally self-renewing and clean, and now I have to smear myself with chemicals and stand beneath water to remove a stink that returns in minutes. I took sustenance with the dignity of simply breathing, and now I have to consume dead things and… poop.”

Chris couldn’t help but chuckle at that, “Yep, humans are fucking disgusting.”

Zach gave a sigh that betrayed quite a bit of emotional upheaval, and Chris winced, reaching over to squeeze his shoulder. “Hey. It’s a lot to go through, I know. I mean, I don’t know. I have no idea, really, but…” he stammered dumbly, trying again, “It’ll be okay. I’ll help you. You’ve helped me all this time, now it’s my turn, right?”

Later as Chris lay in his bed in the dark, he tried to work out the nature of his own feelings. Of course he was happy to have Zach here. He’d exhausted his wishes and he still had Zach with him, which was what he’d wanted. But admittedly, he hadn’t known that Zach would actually turn from a genie into a human, and something about that made him uncomfortable.

In hindsight, he probably shouldn’t have made his last wish while trying to outrun the exhaustion of jetlag.

Wednesday gave a quiet _borf_ from her spot by his feet, and a moment later, his bedroom door was pushed open, Zach silhouetted in the hall light.

“Something wrong?”

Zach hesitated, looking small and lost. “It’s freezing in that room.”

Chris hesitated for only a moment, shifting over and flipping his blankets back. Zach climbed in, curling up with his back to him, shivering slightly.

Worrying his lip, Chris reached out to touch Zach’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze. When he didn’t object to the touch, he scooted over and spooned himself around him, inhaling the scent of the shampoo he’d bought and reveling in the solid, human warmth, the comfort of having someone to hold. Of being allowed to hold Zach—who had always been off limits—in particular.

Maybe it was really that simple. Maybe Zach had become a human because Chris had wished for him to stay, to be accessible, and to need him. He hadn’t really figured out the conditions he’d been looking for in his head, but they were met nonetheless. He’d made his wish, and it had been granted.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Control.

“No.”

“Come on, Zach,” Chris said, lazily backstroking in his pool. Zach had gotten as far as standing on the first step, ankle deep, a pair of swim trunks fluttering in the breeze around his thighs. Chris had spent days trying to tempt him into water more plentiful than the shower, explaining that it was a salt water pool, heavy on the professional upkeep, less heavy on the irritating pool chemicals, and heated to a comfortable 80 degrees, spared no expense. At first he’d taken him to the beach, trying get him into the ocean, as natural as could be. He’d gotten a lecture on how humans had defiled the world’s oceans over a scant few hundred years of industry to the point of garbage islands and mass marine life die-offs.

“You know,” he said, lazily treading water, “Most people have a sense of peace in the water. It’s how we were all born, how we spent the first nine months of our lives.”

“I didn’t,” retorted Zach snottily.

Chris rolled his eyes. “Some people’s uncles threw them in the pool to teach them how to swim, and they lived.”

“Some people have shitty uncles, if you ask me.”

Chris stared at him for a moment, then took a deep breath and let himself sink. He curled his hands around his knees, relaxing to just bob near the bottom. Was he being a dick again? Maybe a little, but he wanted Zach to get used to what his human body could do. He was a Waterborne now, might as well get used to it.

Muzzily, he could hear Zach calling out to him, and opened his eyes. He could see that Zach had taken another step down, the dark hair on his calves swirling in the water, the rest of his body broken up by the surface ripples.

He’d learned to hold his breath for a good while, a couple of minutes at least. The water safety training on _The Finest Hours_ had been pretty intense, with a Coast Guard coach that had helped all the guys learn to hold their breath and not panic in the event they fell in and needed rescue. It wasn’t really necessary, he’d thought at the time; they’d filmed in a huge indoor water tank and the boat was on a gimble, plus there were rescue divers and everyone had vests or was harnessed in some shots so they could lift them out quickly if necessary. Damn, that had been a painful shoot, though. Three months in Boston’s frigid winter, day-in and day-out of being miserably cold and soaking wet for hours at a time.

There was a splash, and he felt a strong pair of arms grab and wrench him noisily up to the surface. He took a fresh breath and laughed, turning to find Zach. “Aw, I knew you cared!”

“Asshole,” Zach snarled like a wet cat, splashing him full in the face. “There’s a difference between can’t and won’t.”

“But you did it,” he grinned, splashing him back playfully, “For me.”

“Should’ve let you drown,” Zach spat back, swimming quite strongly to the side of the pool, where he hauled himself out, water streaming off of him in the sparkling sunlight. He shook it from his hair, the rest slicked down against his chest and legs as he padded to the patio chairs to grab a towel and head inside.

Of course, he wasn’t in any actual danger of drowning, but it was the thought he was after. “You’re my hero!” Chris called after him.

Zach was even less convinced when Chris tried to teach him how to drive. At first he’d insisted he knew how and didn’t need to be taught, but as soon as Chris had him behind the wheel of the Jeep in the large empty parking lot of an abandoned mall, Zach didn’t get very far before he didn’t want to play anymore.

“I don’t like it,” he said tightly, the car slowly easing around the few obstacles of medians and light posts, “I can’t control it.”

“You can, you are controlling it,” he insisted. “The car only does what you tell it to do.”

“No it doesn’t,” Zach complained. “I can’t, I have to use this imperfect body to do it. What if it crashes because I misjudge?”

“Happens every damn day,” Chris said, “But we drive them.”

“Well, I don’t want to,” Zach hit the brakes, crossing his arms.

He sulked until Chris had him switch seats and drove them home. And maybe he understood a little bit. He remembered being fifteen and excited to get his learner’s permit, but then the terror as his dad patiently guided him through the streets of Studio City from the passenger’s seat of the old Mustang, for the first time around other cars and drivers doing unpredictable things. He remembered getting into a fender-bender at seventeen, scared and uncertain of what to do. He remembered that fucking DUI down in New Zealand, being arrested and just as horrified of what his parents would say at thirty-four.

“I just want you to be able to do stuff,” he said as they arrived back at the house, the dog happily greeting them at the door. “You can, you know, you don’t have to stay in the house or go wherever I go anymore.”

“I know that,” Zach replied. “Do you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been making me eat food and go places and do all these things, trying to convince me of my humanity,” Zach shook his head, “Trust me, Chris, I don’t need convincing. I am acutely aware of what I am.”

“Okay,” he said, softly conceding the point.

“I’m going to take a shower,” said Zach, turning to the stairs.

Chris watched him go, letting Wednesday out to do her business and grabbing her bowl to fix her dinner. 

Maybe Zach had a point. He had spent the better part of a week pushing Zach, in what he’d thought was beyond boundaries previously set by their interactions and Zach’s confinement. The bottle he so despised still represented something to him—Chris had put it in Zach’s room while cleaning, figuring it was his to do with as he will, only to have it reappear back on his own dresser a day later. 

Maybe it was all too much, too soon. Maybe he should just make them a nice dinner and have a chill night in, and stop riding Zach so hard.

Fuck, there was that, too. Never mind that they’d continued to sleep in Chris’ bed since the first night. Zach was aware he had the option and even hung out in his own room sometimes, but each night he’d come to Chris’ bed and climb in beside him, going to sleep without much discussion. Not that Chris minded the company, but he couldn’t help that he wanted more than that.

It hadn’t gone over his head that Zach was still the same general shape as he’d assumed for the majority of ten-plus years, if a little rougher around the edges. His own personalized unconscious desire in human form. One that he had known intimately once, as an incredible fiery sex-god who knew every intricacy of his mind and body and every possible move that could light him up and make him forget his troubles for a little while. Now, each night, he stared at the back of Zach’s head, wanting badly to get to know his human skin, to discover what he could do to return the favor. 

Just because it happened one time, when Chris had wished for it, demanded it in a way that Zach couldn’t say no, certainly didn’t mean it was on standing offer. It had been a dick move on his part to wish for it in the first place. He knew that now. Every wish had consequences after all.

He set Wednesday’s food down and patted her head, before finding some pasta to boil and pulling out veggies and some chicken to throw on the grill.

Zach returned as he was prepping a salad, and he smiled at the way the five o’clock shadow and overgrown hair softened a look that had always been sharp and perfect before. 

“We’re going to have to get you in for a real haircut from a professional soon,” he said as he scooped carrot rounds into the bowl of greens. Zach met his eyes with narrowed suspicion. Chris shrugged, “Not for the experience. Your hair just grows really fast, man. You probably need haircuts every three weeks, at least. I’ll call Nicole now that we’re back, I could use a trim too.”

“I thought you were going unkempt for your next thing,” Zach said, reaching into the bowl for one of the carrot slices to pop in his mouth. As much as he pretended he didn't like having a digestive tract, he certainly ate whenever food was offered.

“I am,” he replied, and reached up to push back Zach’s freshly washed bangs, which kept flopping into his eyes, “I kind of like yours long like this.”

Zach went still for a second at the brush of his fingers, stiffening before he stalked away. “Your water’s boiling over.”

Cursing, Chris grabbed the pot of pasta from the burner to give it a stir and drain off the water. He sighed, staring after Zach as he planted himself on the sofa with the phone Chris had bought him, before grabbing the container of marinating chicken to take to the grill outside.

This was how it had been all week. He’d get Zach to do things with him, for better or worse, but eventually a moment would feel loaded and Zach would get in a huff and stalk off. It wasn’t their typical ease anymore, even the usual silence while they were both doing their own thing now felt deafening. Every night, he’d go to bed and Zach would wander in and allow himself to be held, and every morning, he’d be long gone before Chris was awake.

Zach was his closest friend, and lately he even questioned that. It felt like there had been a progressive contempt building since his last wish. 

“Are you mad at me?” he asked after they had sat down to eat and Zach was most of the way through his salad.

“Define mad.”

“Jesus,” Chris grumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Are you angry about all the horribly pathetic human things I’ve tried to get you to do lately?”

Zach sighed, putting down his wine, “I’m not mad, I’m annoyed. I’ve been around humans a thousand times longer than my own people, at this point. You aren’t showing me anything new.”

“Maybe not, but you haven’t experienced things—human things—as one of us. It’s different.” Chris said. Zach simply stared at him, and he shrugged, “Okay, maybe it’s not different. But I’m just trying to show you the positives, the good things about it. I want you to have some fun and feel good,” he tried to explain. “I’m just… I dunno, I’m trying to pay you back.”

“Pay me back?” Zach’s brows gathered, “What for?”

“Everything!” he gestured widely, “My whole fucking life. My job, my career, this house… Everything I am is because of you.”

“That’s such bullshit, Chris,” scoffed Zach. “Everything you wanted was already within your reach. You’re talented and smart and determined and… and _good_. You didn’t need my help, I barely did anything. All of this would have happened for you anyway.”

“But I always had you with me,” he insisted, “I always had you to talk things over with. You’ve always been here for me.”

“I didn’t have a choice!” Zach yelled with frustration, standing up.

“Well, now you do!” Chris shouted defiantly, “You’re free! It’s the least I can do. So you can… you can do whatever you want. You can be your own person. You can make your own hair appointments. Jesus christ.”

Zach opened his mouth and closed it again, his eyes wide. “I… I don’t know how to do that. I don’t… I don’t have a name.”

“Sure you do, you’re Zach—” he cast about, eyes lighting on the wine bottle label, “Zachary Quinto, just make something up, no one’s gonna ask for ID for a haircut.”

“No,” he said forcefully, “I don’t exist. I don’t have a purpose, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.”

“You have time,” Chris offered, “You have plenty of time to figure it out.”

“I don’t have time, don’t you get it?” he spluttered, “I don’t have time, I’m human, I don’t have time!”

“Is that…?” Chris backed up, really looking at what Zach had said in surprise. “Is that what’s bothering you?”

Zach sniffed and blinked furiously, betraying his state of near tears.

“Oh man,” Chris mopped his own face and softened, standing to take Zach by the shoulders, “Remember what I was like when we met? I get it. I was in such a hurry to be somebody.”

“You were somebody already,” sniveled Zach. “I don’t really exist.”

“Yes you do,” Chris pulled him into a hug, “You exist. You’re here with me, right now. And you can stay here, if you want. You have choices. You aren’t a prisoner anymore.”

Zach gave a shaky sigh, one hand hesitantly rising to Chris’ back and then dropping awkwardly to his side again. Chris reached down and took his arms, bringing them around his waist, watching Zach’s face as he frowned. He raised his own eyebrows. “This is hugging, Zach, it’s a thing humans do to comfort each other.”

Rolling his eyes made an errant tear slip free, but Zach tried to sass his way through it, “For fuck’s sake, I know what hugging is.”

“Do you?” he asked, “I gotta wonder, man. C’mere. Try it.”

Chris opened his own arms and waited, letting Zach take initiative. Zach eyed him with heavy suspicion, but eventually stepped back in, tentatively putting his arms around his waist. Chris pulled him in close, one hand reaching up to cup the back of his neck, smiling a little when he felt Zach readjust his arms similarly. It was warm and solid. “See? Feels nice, hm?” he asked, rubbing Zach’s back.

He felt Zach swallow, his fingertips carding through the hair at the back of his own neck. He moved to bring their foreheads together. Zach’s eyes had closed, lashes spiked with dampness, and a wet trail along his cheek. He brought his thumb forward to gently swipe it away, watching Zach’s lips part to take in a swift breath.

When he opened his eyes again, Zach’s pupils were blown wide and dark with something else, and Chris’ heart decided to go off. He swiped his own lips with his tongue, watching Zach’s eyes trace the movement.

“You can do whatever you want,” Chris murmured softly, cupping stubbly cheeks with both hands. He meant in general, but he also meant this, now, whatever this was.

But then Zach reached up to jerk his hands away. “You’re infuriating,” he snarled suddenly, stalking away, back to his chair and sulking down at his dinner plate. 

“Okay,” Chris huffed, “So I guess you’re definitely mad at me now?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I don’t fucking know,” Zach glowered, stabbing his chicken with his fork and biting it with little delicacy.

“Fine,” Chris scowled, taking his own plate and wine to the living room couch, away from the genie-sized snit Zach was in, grabbing the remote to switch the tv on. Sometimes he had to cut his losses.

That night, Chris showered, pulled on a clean pair of underwear and climbed into bed. He took so easily to occupying one side of it, though he doubted Zach would even come to him tonight. Sometimes he wondered why he’d always bought king-sized beds since moving out on his own, so damn proud of himself for getting out of a twin as his parents had insisted on throughout his childhood and teen years. Like a huge bed was the mark of an adult. It was like he’d been setting himself up since the beginning, expectation versus reality. What a privileged asshole problem to have, he snorted to himself, wondering why his bed was perpetually too big and too empty, or why it never seemed to be filled the right way.

He was very nearly asleep when the mattress dipped and someone scooted in under the covers. He almost turned automatically, almost rolled to spoon up and hold Zach like he had the rest of the week, glad he’d come back after all. But he remembered is own anger and held back. Several minutes passed, listening to Zach breathe. Chris curled his fingers against his own thigh as he stared up at the dark ceiling above him.

Finally, Zach rolled over to face him. Chris hesitated, swallowing before he turned his head to find Zach’s eyes, open and studying from the other pillow.

“You don’t… wish to hold me tonight?”

“Uh, no,” Chris blinked, “Generally when people fight and don’t resolve anything, they don’t cuddle.”

Zach frowned, “But I’m not angry anymore.”

“Okay,” Chris raised an eyebrow, “So why were you mad?”

Zach dropped his eyes, “I don’t know.”

Clicking his tongue with a huff, Chris rolled over to face the other direction.

“Now you’re mad at me?”

“Yeah I’m mad,” said Chris, “You don’t get to get bitchy with me for no reason and then expect everything to be fine after an hour.”

“It was never a problem before.”

“No, because you were the divine sassmaster in control of my destiny or whatever, but guess what, Zach,” he grumbled, “You don’t get a pass anymore.”

“Fine.”

He practically heard Zach’s eyeroll. Rolling back over, Chris laughed with incredulity. “You know, I can’t believe I’m the one saying this, for probably the first time in my life, but hey, here’s another humanity lesson for you. When someone’s mad at you and you want to cuddle, you gotta apologize for being a dick first.”

“Well, I was mad at you first,” Zach said snottily.

“And I tried to make it up to you!” Chris exclaimed, hitching up on his elbow. Wednesday snuffled through her nose and jumped down to her own bed in the corner. “You got all weepy about approaching middle age or whatever, so I gave you a hug and you had a fit!”

“I wasn’t a divine being, I was a slave!”

“And now you’re not!” countered Chris, “You’re welcome! Now, you’re just Zachary Quinto, boring middle-aged human, kind of confused and fragile, and if you want to cuddle, all you gotta do is apologize.”

“I’m not fragile,” he pouted.

“You are,” Chris poked him, enjoying himself. “You’re a little emotionally delicate and it’s kind of cute, minus the snotty flouncing.”

Zach shoved at him, “I don’t flounce.”

“You totally fucking do, man,” Chris shoved back. Zach went to retaliate, but Chris caught his hands and a struggle ensued. He got a huge kick out of the fact that Zach wasn’t all-powerful anymore, he was barely even a physical match since Chris had bulked up in the last few years. They wrestled, and Chris got his hands around both of Zach’s wrists to hold him down, swing a leg over and sit on him, and froze.

Zach breathed hard from the struggle, chest rising and falling between them. “This body does many things I can’t control,” he muttered, cheeks flushed.

“Yeah,” said Chris, “That’s pretty standard issue, I’m afraid.” He reached over to turn on a lamp, careful to climb off and back from the hard-on Zach was sporting in his pajamas. Maybe in another time, he wouldn’t have had the wherewithal to stop and ask questions.

“Is this why you were mad before?” he waved a hand. “Because, I mean, I had a feeling, but then… Is this something you actually want?”

“I don’t know, I don’t understand why this body feels the way it does sometimes,” Zach shook his head, rubbing at his wrists, “What I want doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah it does,” Chris tried to keep a level head here, leaning on his elbow. “You can want things too, you know. You’re free to… to act on your own desires now. And you already know I want it.”

“I don’t know that you want it,” said Zach.

“Sure you do, you’re…” Chris paused, “Well, I guess you don’t have a direct line to my brain anymore, but geez, it was only a few weeks ago that we—” He stopped, shaking his head, “Okay, how about this. I kind of want to kiss you right now.”

Zach leaned forward, but Chris put a hand out and held him back, “Wait… Okay. I want that, and maybe I’m reading this a certain way. But you don’t have to go with it just because I want to, do you get that?”

He got a snide look. “Yes, Chris, I’ve only observed human behavior for eons.”

“But you haven’t been a human for eons and you just said you don’t understand your feelings, right? Just,” Chris gestured vaguely between them, “This is different now. Fuck, it should have been different before but… I feel like there hasn’t been a lot of consent, and I don’t want you to think—”

Zach’s mouth was on his, smearing his words and thoughts to the side. He fell into it for a minute, because Zach’s lips were soft and warm and agile and distracting. “Wait a sec, Zach, just give me a second.”

With an exasperated huff, Zach backed off.

“Listen, a couple hours ago, you were having an existential crisis and I was just trying to make you feel better and things got a little bit weird, which was probably my fault,” Chris babbled as Zach rolled his eyes, “And I’ve been pushing you too much and I just—”

“You wanted me to experience good human things,” interrupted Zach, “Show me these good human things.”

“But—”

“Chris, shut up,” said Zach, lifting his fingers to his lips. “I’m sorry I was mad and I want to cuddle.”

Chris snorted at that, a well of affection swelling up in his belly. “You’re such a dork. A middle-aged dork.”

Zach scowled, “I’m not middle-aged.”

“You are,” said Chris, “You’re what… 10,000, maybe 10,500? You’re way over that hill, man.”

Before he could say anything else, Chris moved back in to kiss him again, this time slowly, lifting his hand to his cheek.

“Didn’t we already do this?” he asked when he pulled back.

“Not this, specifically, no,” Zach said, his eyes still on Chris’ mouth.

Chris thought back to that night, “I guess we didn’t kiss at all.” It struck him now how dissociative it had been, letting himself get so caught up in his own pleasure, how very selfish that entire wish had been. “It’s nice, though, right?”

Zach nodded, and Chris rewarded him with another. “Was the rest of it good though? For you?”

“I wasn’t human,” Zach’s breath hitched as Chris let his fingers trail down his neck and collarbones, down to where the hem of his tank had ridden up at his waist, lighting on his bare hip, “This feels… much different.”

“I thought you said I wasn’t showing you anything new,” Chris grinned, nudging Zach to sit up and lift his arms so he could pull the shirt off, watching him shiver a little as he flattened his palm to his chest. “How is it different for you?”

“It feels more…” Zach shook his head, struggling with words, which he rarely did. Chris moved to straddle over him again, hesitating as Zach inhaled and preemptively grabbed his own wrists, though he hadn’t made a move to pin him down again.

“You don’t like feeling out of control, do you?” Chris asked.

“I thought I had been as a prisoner,” Zach confessed, “Now I see I was mistaken.”

“You feel more out of control as a human?”

“I have so little control over this body, or the circumstances of my existence, or anything.”

“That’s true,” Chris said, gently twisting out of Zach’s grip to touch the hair on his chest, “It’s true for everyone. But we have choices. Things we can do that give us some kind of illusion of being in control of our lives. Right? Isn’t that what Zach the genie would tell me?”

Zach sighed, his eyes hooded, “I don't know anymore.”

Chris paused, wondering where all of Zach’s answers had gone. He let his fingers trace the swirls of dark, soft hair around his nipples, watching how he reacted. “Sometimes I like that feeling. Sometimes when everything is so much, and I have so many stupid decisions to make about my life, letting someone else take control for awhile feels good.” He shifted back, curling his hands into the waist of Zach’s pajama pants, pausing to ask, “May I?”

Zach nodded, and he pulled the pants and underwear down and off. Zach had rarely been shy about his body, before his last wish or since, but being allowed to look again felt like a concession.

“I hoped it felt good for you to do that. As good as it was for me,” he brushed his hands down Zach’s hips and thighs, scooting down between them.

“It was your wish.”

“My wish,” Chris shook his head, looking up to meet Zach’s eyes. “What I wish now is that you feel good.”

Zach blinked, “I can’t do that.”

“But I can. If you let me.” Chris waited for permission, his breath ghosting over his prize. Zach swallowed thickly, and nodded yes.


End file.
